Here are some of the things one Washington labor lobbyist was trying to do in the final weeks of the 93rd Congress: • help break the Senate filibuster that was killing the proposed Agency for Consumer Advocacy; • save from …
The roots of Watergate, I would maintain, are to be found in an antidemocratic philosophy carried by a new political type I shall call the “political technicians.” Their emergence can be laid to the weaknesses and decline of the regular …
Wage-price controls are not currently on the political agenda—partly because of a widespread ideological abhorrence of direct government intervention, but mostly because wages and, to an extent, prices as well are now being restrained by the rapid decline in the …
The current woman’s movement is unique in the American experience. This movement, multidimensional in character, is striking toward change in the structure of our major institutions, in the quality and content of our culture, and at the level of interpersonal …
The debate over Soviet-American detente called for by Secretary Kissinger has been in progress now for some time. Parallel with the discussions in the United States, an unofficial debate among the Soviet dissidents over the terms of detente has taken …
The record of the Mexican Student Movement of 1968 tells a story of buoyant collective fervor that soon takes on darker overtones; the wave of hope and generous idealism generated by these youngsters breaks against the wall of sheer power, …
“Does the doctrine of original sin present a truth accessible to natural reason unaided by revelation, or a truth known from revelation alone?” Though it might sound strange in these pages, that, in his chosen idiom, is the question we …
The current crisis of the capitalist system seems so deep that even investment bankers, like Felix Rohatyn of Lazard Freres, are advocating “state planning of the economy.” There is, therefore, no question as to whether there will be structural change …
The lead article in the January Commentary, prominent on the cover, was “Oil: The Issue of American Intervention,” by Robert W. Tucker.* It argues a case for the armed seizure by the U.S. of the Arabian coastline bordering the Persian …
Nothing at all happens—neither fear, nor stiffening before the executioner: I let my head fall on the hollowed block, as on a casual lover’s shoulder. Roll, curly head, over the planed boards, don’t get a splinter in your parted lips: …
Chomsky and Draper Editor: In the Winter 1975 issue of Dissent, there is a “Public Notice” consisting of a paragraph from a review of my book Peace in the Middle East? by Theodore Draper, in which he alleges that my …
Wittgenstein’s Vienna, by Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin. New York: Simon & Schuster, Touchstone Books. 314 pp. “A place where one would like to spend one’s life, or at least a place where it would be smart to stay, even …
IH: There is obviously a great deal of anxiety in America today concerning the situation in the Middle East. Many people feel that there was ground for modest hopefulness concerning negotiations before the Rabat Conference, but that it has seriously …
Divorced in America, by Joseph Epstein. New York: E. P. Dutton. 318 pp. Divorce, middle-class American style in particular, is endlessly discussed and little understood. The divorce rate continues to rise (the remarriage rate as well); the statistics no longer …
The American Intellectual Elite, by Charles Kadushin. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 395 pp. The Long Dark Night of the Soul: The American Intellectual Left and the Vietnam War, by Sandy Vogelgesang. New York: Harper & Row. 249 pp. The …
