First, we are still here. “A prophet,” said Mr. Dooley, “is a man who foresees trouble.” But when trouble comes, I would add, it can still look remarkably like yesterday. The land swarms with prophets of doom. “Repent-for-the-Last-Hour-Is-atHand” men lie …
Index, the admirable English quarterly devoted to freedom of expression throughout the world, prints in a recent issue a group of jokes from totalitarian (or, as in the case of Greece, recently dictatorial) countries, and prefaces the selection with a …
Black Fiction, by Roger Rosenblatt. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 211 pp. Roger Rosenblatt begins this book by telling us what it is not—and one is relieved to discover that it is not another study promoting (or decrying) cultural nationalism or …
The New Liberty: Survival and Justice in a Changing World by Ralf Dahrendorf, Stanford: Stanford University Press. 99 pp. Ralf Dahrendorf, the author of Class Consciousness in Industrial Society and Society and Democracy in Germany, is an American-style academic liberal who …
The Rise and Fall of American Communism, by Philip Jaffe. Introduction by Bertram D. Wolfe. New York: Horizon Press. By a quirk of history Stalin chose the American Communist party, surely one of the least significant parties in the scheme …
The Soviets: The Russian Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers Councils, 1905-1921, by Oskar Anweiler. Translated from the German by Ruth Hein. New York: Pantheon Books. 324 pp. Whatever happened to the soviets under which, as Lenin described them, “the masses themselves …
I When the National Review celebrates its 20th anniversary this November, conservatives may salute its editor with the toast: “You’ve come a long way, Buckley.” Among the associate editors, consultants, and contributors another toast might be made, this time raised, …
As this article is being written (early July), the House and Senate each have passed housing bills and a conference committee is about to try to resolve two very different approaches. Crudely stated, the House bill, passed on June 20 …
Images of war carry a force the facts alone hardly ever sponsor. When American soldiers went to Vietnam, they also stayed at home, on television, in battle reports that droned for a precise interval and then ceased for 24 hours, …
The thing An immaterial thing should be treated with great care. Protect it from the damp and cold. Also from the heat. Room-temperature is ideal. Polish daily. Use a peacock plume or toothbrush. On holy days do not display conspicuously …
The case of Republica [the Portuguese socialist paper taken over by the Communists and MFA] is not simply a revelation of the internal conflicts affecting the destiny of the Portuguese revolution. It is also a revelation of our own capacity …
Who are they, and who has the right to speak for them? Oppressed nationalities find it difficult to get a hearing because those who pretend to represent them often are political adventurers who merely exploit them—be it for imperialistic purposes …
What used to be sorrowfully regarded as the “English disease” can now be diagnosed more precisely as the ailing of social democracy. Some of the symptoms may appear peculiarly British but what I will call “the Social Democratic Dilemma,” and …
If man is a rational animal, it is surely odd that he so often debates questions whose answers must be presupposed before the debate can take place. (I use the term “man” here in its primary dictionary meaning, to denote …
With the end of the Vietnam War, and the recent events in Portugal, it is only natural that many people should be discussing the prospects for democracy. We, too, are deeply involved in this discussion. To set it going in …
