Spring 2025

The congressional election is now mercifully over and the daily barrage of negative ads a dimming memory. But it should be remembered that in a rational political system there would have been much to discuss this year. In the summer …

Who Speaks for America? By Eric Alterman Cornell University Press, 1998, 224 pp., $25 Probably no important area of public policy presents such a daunting challenge to the theory and practice of democracy as foreign policy. Not only does foreign …

First amendment freedoms are inevitably invoked by provocateurs and dissenters seeking to change or com-plain about the status quo, so it’s not surprising that anti-abortion protesters have discovered free speech. After abortion was legalized and normalized in the early 1970s, …

India declared its manhood last spring by blasting five nuclear devices. “It had to be done,” said the outspoken Hindu nationalist leader Balasaheb Thackeray, “we had to prove that we are not eunuchs.” Picking up on the sexual subtext, a …