The momentous events of 1989 and the unification of Germany recast the long-standing debate about Germany’s role in a changing Europe. Virtually all the English-language newsweeklies ran cover stories on the new “German question,” and academic experts weighed in on …
The debate about Martin Heidegger’s affiliation with National Socialism has been particularly fierce in France because—especially since the decline of Marxism in the late 1970s—Heidegger, the most influential German philosopher of the twentieth century, has played a crucial role for …
Kitty Kelley doesn’t need defenders. The controversy surrounding her Nancy Reagan: An Unauthorized Biography has made her rich (or at least famous) for life. But as the controversy fades from the headlines, we need to take a second look at …
Since the early 1980s, no charge has been pressed so relentlessly—and effectively—against the Democratic party and the American left as that of being captive to “special interests.” Like other buzzwords—choice, family, opportunity, and (most recently) “politically correct” —the phrase “special …
It is now more than three years since I sent a report from Israel to Dissent. That article was composed under the impact of the intifada, then (late January 1988) still in its earliest stages. As a historian, I suffer …
What have we accomplished? We liberated Kuwait from a brutal aggressor; we kept Saddam Hussein in power; we killed at least a hundred thousand Iraqis and destroyed the infrastructure of the country. We permitted Hussein to murder the Kurds to …
By rights, I ought to “recuse” myself from reviewing this book. As acknowledged in its introduction, I read an early draft of the manuscript several years before its publication, and offered such advice as I could. Though it isn’t common …
That rights are controversial for women is neither a new nor an obvious idea. Although some of us would be quick to attribute only to men the view that women do not need equal rights, this would be misleading. How …
My aim in this essay is to defend a complex, imprecise, and, at crucial points, uncertain account of society and politics. I have no hope of theoretical simplicity, not at this historical moment when so many stable oppositions of political …
In Waiting for Lefty, the radical play of the 1930s, Clifford Odets’s characters suffer not only from poverty but also from disintegrating families and a decline of individual honor. The audiences, caught up in a felt connection between their own …
There is mounting evidence that American children are more and more in peril, in part because they are less and less assured of the sustained care, support, and safety that comes only with order in their immediate environments. Children are …
Movies have become machines for the sadomasochistic imagination. Die Hard 2 is said to depict 264 killings. But so-called serious cinema has also been skidding down a slippery slope, aiming to meet schlock halfway. Since The Wild Bunch (1969) and …
It was always unlikely that the democratization of public life in the Soviet Union would continue if combined with a collapsing economy, a disintegrating political system, and internal separatism. Something had to give, and the most likely victim was democratization. …
The collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe reopens the question whether there is any form of socialism that might be adopted, with popular support, in the advanced societies. The experience of communism suggests, fairly unequivocally, that such a system …
In the Gulf War that Saddam Hussein forced on the whole world it was only natural that the Iraqi president should be portrayed as if he were the essential problem. If Iraq were routed, Saddam destroyed, and the Iraqi military …
