“Republicanizing” the Democrats  

When Teddy Kennedy was asked what he thought of the Democratic neoliberals, he is said to have responded: “We don’t need two Republican parties.” There is a good deal of substance to Kennedy’s quip. Many of the neoliberals, including two …



Of a Veteran  

One night last October my father came home late from a meeting, talked with my mother for a few minutes in the living room, and went up to bed. She says he looked as beautiful as ever. When she came …





From Sicily and Back  

For over a year, I’d been looking for Danilo Dolci. I’d searched all over Italy. I’d pored through major publications where news and photos of him used to appear. And I’d tried to get to know the people who worked …



England: After the Miners’ Defeat  

LONDON — It was never just a strike, but a confrontation between two Britains: the Labour and union strongholds of the decaying industrial north and of the increasingly postindustrial south, which provided Mrs. Thatcher with her electoral majority. In symbolic …



A Long Journey  

Lionel Abel is a witty and cultivated man who has participated in or observed at close hand many of the past four decades’ important art movements and intellectual currents. His political involvement also goes back a long way: he was …





From Ramparts to Reagan  

In mid-March the Washington Post Magazine featured an article by Peter Collier and David Horowitz, best known nowadays for their encomium to Camelot, a bestseller called The Kennedys: An American Drama, wherein they lovingly explore every weakness of that villainous …



From Ramparts to Reagan  

In mid-March the Washington Post Magazine featured an article by Peter Collier and David Horowitz, best known nowadays for their encomium to Camelot, a bestseller called The Kennedys: An American Drama, wherein they lovingly explore every weakness of that villainous …



In Defense of Utopianism  

It is no longer clear whether winning or losing elections is the bigger disaster facing socialists. The British Labour party lost to Margaret Thatcher, Francois Mitterrand’s French Socialist party won unprecedented power, and neither is in especially good shape. When …



Reagan’s Contempt for History  

Bitburg, Germany, 1945; Managua, Nicaragua, 1985. The two appear to be so far apart that no occurrence could possibly bring them together. But in March and April, 1985, Ronald Reagan asked himself a question, Whom shall I honor? And his …



Politics and the Battered Woman  

Jean Bethke Elshtain’s essay “Politics and the Battered Woman” [Dissent, Winter 1985] not only seriously misrepresents my book Women and Male Violence: The Visions and Struggles of the Battered Women’s Movement, but it is a good example of an all …



The New Bedford Rape Trial  

One evening in March 1983, after giving her three-year-old daughter a birthday party, a New Bedford, Massachusetts woman left her two children with their father and walked to a neighborhood bar to buy cigarettes. According to her story, she bought …



Where Hitler Lives Again  

The long-legged, high-kicking beauties in Mel Brooks’s The Producers look like any other chorus line of dancers but for a single exception: they are suited out in the black uniforms of the SS. The dance they perform, backed by a …



The Bishops and Their Critics  

“Modern capitalism,” wrote John Maynard Keynes, “is absolutely irreligious, without internal union, without much public spirit, often, though not always, a mere congeries of possessors and pursuers.” Over 60 years ago, R. H. Tawney, who cited those lines from the …