Whether or not the idea ever had any validity, no one could argue plausibly after November 6 that labor is the leader or vanguard of the people. But this much can be said: AFL–CIO members gave the Mondale–Ferraro ticket a …
When Bernhard Goetz was approached on a New York subway by four young black men demanding $5, he drew a revolver and fired all its dum-dum bullets at them. Two were hit in the back; one remains paralyzed and comatose …
The American physician has been portrayed, in turn, as snake-oil healer, charlatan, kindly old country doctor, and venerated high priest of the art of healing. Now, in a brutally changing world where vast corporations assume new power, he may be forced …
Given two diametrically opposed projections of our economic and political future, what should the response of the left be? I pose the issue in this uncertain way for a reason. The United States and the other advanced industrial economies are …
In 1932 R. H. Tawney published an article in which he reflected upon the events of the previous year: the collapse of the Labour government and the massive electoral defeat of the Labour party in which it lost 235 seats, …
I: From Criticism to Terrorism Around 1960 a series of civic upheavals began that made the West tremble. Contrary to the predictions of Marxism, the crisis was not an economic one, nor was its central protagonist the proletariat. It was …
Long before the election took place in Nicaragua, the Reagan administration dismissed it as “sham” and “Soviet style.” After the election took place on November 4, 1984, President Reagan pronounced it a “farce.” To anyone familiar with the kind of …
I should like to argue with Norman Thomas who, I will assume, is present in absentia. As Irving Howe said earlier, in Norman Thomas’s later years, this celebrated socialist leader concluded that his career had been a failure. So I say …
Reagan’s reelection by a landslide fully conformed to the well-established precedent that incumbent presidents win new terms when relative peace abroad and prosperity at home prevail. Of 13 incumbents before him who ran for election in this century, only four …
In Civil Wars, Rosellen Brown has created a remarkable personal view of the long-term effect of the 1960s civil rights movement on two of its participants. Teddy Carll, a native Mississippian, and Jessie Singer, a “red-diaper baby” from New York, meet …
Edward Banfield, a political scientist at Harvard, is best known for his acerbic treatment of liberal hopes for urban renewal. In The Democratic Muse he provides a conservative analysis of the situation of the visual arts in America, arguing that …
Suppose that all of New York City’s black middle-and working-class housing developments were plagued by crime and management neglect. Then a recent court settlement upholding “occupancy controls” in Brooklyn’s Starrett City, the country’s largest federally subsidized housing development, might make …
It was an exercise in ’60s nostalgia. “Our time has come!” he shouted from the pulpits of black churches and the campaign stump. “Our time has come!” It was a cry reminiscent of the “Freedom Now” chant of the early civil rights movement, one …
For a while it seemed as if it would take less than a decade to put Vietnam behind us. It was not just that we had finally signed a peace treaty with North Vietnam, but that debate over the war had ceased to be …
television is never in itself decisive. I learned this in 1972, when New York’s most notorious TV operative confided to me how he would make John Lindsay president. In ’84, the two debates showed Ronald Reagan as a man whose touch with reality is tenuous. …
