In the age of Eisenhower, America’s civil defense “program” was an amusing fraud. Presidential, Congressional and public apathy inspired bumbling CD officials to actions that were sublimely ridiculous. Back in 1952, when no constructive use could be found for the …
Facing a severe challenge from without and trouble from within, American opinion leaders feel the need to assure themselves that the ship of state is under firm control. The debate on national goals with which we are deluged today is …
Fallout is the hormone of the small town mind a fallout shelter is sex that your shelter program for every home owner is sexing up the countryside and killing us in the bigcity bar. If this is good for the …
When FDR came to Washington in 1933 he was accompanied by dashing young economists and social scientists ready to remake the government, if not the world. Many were fresh from Columbia University, and quite unlike the Harvard—MIT contingent that now …
Democratic power springs from an enlightened electorate. The neglect of this possibility in America, the failure to protect and advance it with new form and content during a century and a half of expanding area and population, of complicating economy …
We now have sufficient information confirming that the Chinese Communists have approached American officials and private exporters with proposals to buy large quantities of American surplus wheat and grains to feed China’s hungry millions. One such report states that China …
As this issue is being completed, it appears that the Kennedy Administration has finally decided to resume nuclear testing in the atmosphere. This decision, leaked to the press after the Kennedy-MacMillan meeting in Bermuda, is to be carried out in …
It is a long time now since craftsmen in the trade regarded with amusement any statements suggesting that publishing was a business—publishers had considered themselves gentlemen, not businessmen, and their declared concern had been with art, not commerce. But that …
For a full decade now—for a span of years that is gradually coming into focus as a historical epoch in its own right—the major countries of Western Europe have been living under conservative rule. This situation has created new and …
The letters column of the July ’61 number of Mad comics under the banner, “A Mad State of Affairs,” features a photograph of the daughter of the governor of North Carolina smilingly enthroned in bed with a batch of Mads. …
The FLN Editors: In the Spring/1961 issue of Dissent your Paris correspondent, Paul Parisot, states that “The FLN is tied to the International Communist bloc and includes an internal tendency whose orientation, thought and fundamental political conceptions have nothing in …
Reading your special issue, Cuba: The Invasion and Its Consequences, was indeed a painful experience. In the aftermath of the Cuban “fiasco” surely more could be expected from a magazine that claims to be democratic socialist and radical than this …
THE AMERICANS: Photographs by Robert Frank, introduction by Jack Kerouac. Grove Press. 1959. Shortly before Joe Hill was executed by the state of Utah, he requested that his ashes be scattered in every state of the union, except Utah. That …
THE FUTILITARIAN SOCIETY, by Wiliam J. Newman. George Braziller. 1961. William J. Newman’s theme can be expressed in a loose syllogism: America’s problems call for change and innovation. But conservatives are “stasis seekers.” Therefore conservative ideas are a “menace” to …
Are workers becoming “middle class”? Is Fortune correct in describing workers as a “salariat” rather than a “proletariat”? A belief is spreading among social scientists and unionists that in their middle age unions are becoming middle class. But an evaluation …
