One of the few certainties of the 20th century was that the apostles of Marxist materialism and the adherents of Muslim theocracy were mortal enemies. In Afghanistan, they went to war. But that was the 20th century.
The events of 1968 came forty years after the publication of H.G. Wells’ The Open Conspiracy: Blueprint for a World Revolution, which would be reissued three years later with the new title What are We to Do with Our Lives. …
Two new books, Mark Lilla’s The Stillborn God and Lee Harris’s The Suicide of Reason, argue that religious extremism imperils the liberal – and, as they see it, fragile – traditions of the West. Both books base much of their …
In Waiting for Lefty, the radical play of the 1930s, Clifford Odets’s characters suffer not only from poverty but also from disintegrating families and a decline of individual honor. The audiences, caught up in a felt connection between their own …
Can you think of a time in this century,” asked a Democratic party activist, “when the Democrats were in worse shape than they are now?” “Yes,” I answered, “the 1920s.” One would have to go back to the uninspired Democratic …
Stanley Fish, the Duke University Arts and Sciences professor of English, chair of the Duke English Department, distinguished professor of law, and self-described “academic leftist,” has just finished a dazzling performance. The overflow audience at Princeton has sat rapt as …
This is the year of the Tory tickets. All four of the men selected to run are the sons of millionaires. The fathers of three of the four were millionaires many times over. They are being generously supported by their …
The decline of the Republican right and the renewed interest in major social legislation compels us to ask a crucial question: Can the welfare state fulfill its promise without a strong ethical core? In Western Europe that ethical core was …
Two questions inform Sandy Levinson’s essay. He asks (a) why we should respect and obey the law, particularly when there is so often a tension between morality and law, and (b) by what authority judges impose their will on the …
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 …
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 …
The history of the last half-millennium can be written as the story of rising classes, each pronouncing itself a universal class that embodies the general good. More narrowly, just as Virginia gentlemen stressed the virtues of breeding and farmers extolled …
In the months before the 1980 election when voters were asked what the number one issue was, they replied inflation/the economy. When they were asked what should be done, about half supported the balanced-budget proposals of Jimmy Carter, a little …
The treatment of Eisenhower by historians has become as interesting as the history of his presidency per se. Revisionists looking back on his Administration through the prisms of Vietnam, the collapse of the Great Society, and double-digit inflation have discovered …
The treatment of Eisenhower by historians has become as interesting as the history of his presidency per se. Revisionists looking back on his Administration through the prisms of Vietnam, the collapse of the Great Society, and double-digit inflation have discovered …
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