Jeff Faux - Dissent Magazine

Destructive Myths

Jeff Faux ▪ Summer 2022

Romanticized stories about the Second World War are at the heart of American exceptionalism.

The Public Sector We Need

Jeff Faux ▪ March 12, 2021

To have any chance of implementing popular left-wing ideas, we need to restore the capacity of democratic government to serve working people.

A Short History of American Empire

Jeff Faux ▪ Fall 2017

Stephen Kinzer is one of the few mainstream voices reminding Americans of our imperial identity. In The True Flag, he takes us back to where he thinks it all began—1898, when the U.S. political class pushed off on the quest for global domination.

American Futures: The Shortcomings of the Governing Class

Jeff Faux ▪ Fall 2013

If tomorrow the GOP agreed to everything in the agenda that Barack Obama laid out in his February State of the Union address, the progress in dealing with the dramatic changes in the economic prospects of most Americans would be close to zero.

Big Dollar, Little Democracy

Jeff Faux ▪ Fall 2012

Republic Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It by Lawrence Lessig Twelve, 2011, 381 pp. Money talks. It is also a conversation stopper. Almost any discussion among progressives of what is really needed to solve the nation’s …

The Shaky Case for Optimism

Jeff Faux ▪ Winter 2011

Rebound: Why America Will Emerge Stronger from the Financial Crisis by Stephen J. Rose St Martin’s Press, 2010, 288 pp. The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050 by Joel Kotkin Penguin Press, 2010, 320 pp. The Next 100 Years: A …

To the Deficit Commission: First Puncture the Myths

Jeff Faux ▪ July 7, 2010

Jeff Faux: Deficit Myths

Obama’s Mexican Challenge

Jeff Faux ▪ Fall 1984

When Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton pledged to Ohio Democrats last spring to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, they were immediately charged by the mainstream press with pandering to labor, thus re-igniting the simplistic “free-trade vs. protectionism” debate …

The Democrats’ Opportunity: Are They Ready?

Jeff Faux ▪ Winter 2006

After World War I, a French general was asked how one fights the Germans. “Retreat and retreat,” was the reply, “and wait for the German mistake.” So it has pretty much been with the Democratic Party generals after the watershed …

Flat Note from the Pied Piper of Globalization

Jeff Faux ▪ Fall 2005

Thomas L. Friedman’s The World Is Flat

Without Consent: Global Capital Mobility and Democracy

Jeff Faux ▪ Fall 1984

Shortly after he became the first general secretary of the World Trade Organization, Renato Ruggiero observed, “We are no longer writing the rules of interaction among separate national economies. We are writing the constitution of a single global economy.” The …