Any great social change unleashes great expectations. And therefore, of course, it leads to great disappointments. In 1989, a variety of individuals and social groups pinned their varied hopes to a change of political systems. For some it meant the …
The defendant, sitting in a bulletproofed glass box, rambled on about the historic closeness of Turks and Kurds and the need to recognize Turkey’s vibrant, if somewhat flawed, democracy. His lawyers said little—their request to call witnesses was denied by …
I firmly believe that even Israelis who voted for Benjamin Natanyahu were re-lieved by Ehud Barak’s victory last May 17. It was as if the whole country had been in a state of anxiety and depression, and now its mood …
Figures emerge from the thick of it. That is what I see in David Stern’s art—and that is why I think of him as a painter not just for the end of the twentieth century, but for the beginning of …
In 1989, my life was coming apart, and there wasn’t a thing I could do. It was hard to get through the day, and even harder to make it through the night. That year I really loved my TV set. …
Nineteen ninety nine was a tough year to be a college-bound high school senior. College admissions were more competitive than ever. “It’s kind of a college mania, with suburban schools sending 70 percent to 80 percent of their students to …
Elshtain and Etzioni respond to my ar-gument for minors’ First Amendment rights with the same highly charged rhetorical devices that have brought our culture to its current state of hysteria over the need to “protect” youth from presumably harmful speech. …
The ways societies view children have changed a great deal over the genera-tions. Authoritarian societies tend to see minors as adults in all ways other than in their small stature. These societies presume that children assume responsibility for their acts. …
The recent publication of two biographies of Betty Friedan, and the media attention the books have drawn, make this an apt moment to reflect on the myths about the women’s movement that some on the political left as well as …
I met Joe Wood in 1992, after mutual friends suggested that I might ask him to write for Dissent. I remember liking him immediately. He was an interesting mix: he was blunt, almost fierce, in his opinions, yet in his …
“How do you feel?” roared Jerry Greenfield, CEO and co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, the ice cream company that has (in the public imagination, at least) long epitomized corporate social responsibility. He posed this question a few years ago to …
Marjorie Heins has written an intelligent but predictable polemic in favor of “free expression” for those she variously calls “youngsters,” (this excludes “little ones” though how little we are not told), “older minors” and, of course, “teenagers” though her argument …
Joe Wood had a voice as deep as a doublebass, and he spoke as he wrote: low, slowly, softly. He forced you to listen attentively to each of his words, pausing gravely as if to prepare you for the next …
If ever there were an opportunity for progressives to seize control of the policy agenda, if ever Beltway rhetoric seemed ready-made for co-optation by the liberal left, the Social Security crisis is it. Social Security is an immensely popular program, …
I have never been a disinterested observer of Central and East European politics. I grew up in Hungary and lived there until I was almost fifty. In only two of those years was there a political order that resembled democracy. …
