From the very beginning of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic nineteenth-century novel The Scarlet Letter, it is easy to hate the Puritans he so carefully describes. They are not simply content to make his heroine, Hester Prynne, wear a scarlet A because …
Some advanced thinkers would like to deprive us of the distinction between left and right, but a world that is getting more unequal and insecure, more divided and dangerous, belies such talk. There have always been issues and policies that …
It is perhaps a sign of living uneasily in the here and now that we spend so much time looking backward and forward. We find our way in the difficult present by focusing on the past and the future. So, …
Like citizens in many other countries, Americans are debating issues of multiculturalism. But the debate in the United States has a special importance because of the profound influence of American ideas around the world. Unfortunately, this influence has not been …
There is a certain romantic attraction in the history of lost causes. The losers are usually nicer guys; in the case of the Russian Mensheviks, they were the humanitarian shadow of communist inhumanity. But the Mensheviks’ fate was not a …
Recent coverage of Chinese events demonstrates that the American media’s strange love-hate relationship with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is alive and well. Now, as in the past, we see shifts between periods when China is presented as a …
Was F.R. Leavis Britain’s New York Intellectual? Though not Jewish himself, his wife and constant collaborator, Queenie Roth Leavis, was; and he was often taken for a Jew, described by one Cambridge undergraduate as dressing and speaking “like a member …
Last fall, Le Livre noir du Communisme: Crimes, terreur, répression (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1997, 850 pp.), a massive compendium of the crimes perpetrated by communist regimes created a public sensation in France and quickly became a bestseller. The controversy over …
Antipersonnel land mines epitomize the vulnerability and risk experienced by many inhabitants of the late modern world. The product of extraordinary scientific ingenuity and scrupulousness, conceived as an inexpensive and efficient means of controlling territory and constricting the movement of …
Fernando Rodríguez is clean shaven, but he makes a pulling motion under his chin as if he’s stroking a long beard.* It’s one of the many euphemisms Cubans use for Fidel Castro. “Este tozudo cumple setenta y dos años el …
Jeffrey C. Isaac is a generous and provocative critic, yet I fear our disagreement may perplex some readers. He is right when he says that I still identify myself as “left” because of values—most simply, liberty, equality, solidarity. Where he …
As i was reading the advance proofs of David Miller’s article, the World Cup was being transmitted from France and shown on British television, to huge popular interest. This spectacle offered the choice of two different kinds of national identification. …
When Thailand devalued its currency in July 1997 it started a world financial crisis that continues to spin out of control. After a year of turbulence, what can we say about the crisis? Beware of experts. Before the crisis, money …
As the countries of the European Union (EU) move toward a common currency in the year 1999, jitters have gripped parts of the European left that see in this process the twilight of democratic popular sovereignty and the dawn of …
One day, God decided that Saddam Hussein had caused enough harm and misery on Earth, and that it was time for Saddam to face the Creator. So God summoned Azrael, the angel of death, and told him to go down …
