Winter 2020

The size of the recent student peace demonstration in Washington only inadequately suggests its importance. Both in organization and ideology the demonstration differed from all that had gone before in the student movement. It is even possible that Turn Toward …

What makes me identify as a radical is the conviction that something new must be added to the American calculus of goods and bads, rights and wrongs. I have an uneasy sense of a whole nation skating lightly over a …

These days we don’t ask of a new president “what will he do?” but “how will he appear?” The image of the leader at home, and now the “credibility” of his intentions abroad—these are the crucial elements of contemporary politics. …

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 spontaneous movement that erupted out of Greensboro last year is laboring forth an ideology. This is a difficult period for so young a movement, especially one relatively lacking in politically sophisticated leadership. The students are further handicapped by an …

On one point everyone seems agreed: had Eisenhower run again he would have won again. It seems likely that even Nixon would have won, had Eisenhower entered the campaign a week or so earlier than he did. The President, our …

1. Disillusionment with the idea of revolution is one of the most interesting features of American intellectual life today. Since revolution was never a practical possibility in America, this disillusionment might seem as unimportant as the enthusiasm preceding it. What …

“The first act has come off very well, but who is going to write the second?” A local realtor addressed this question to the assembled “Central Committee” of the student movement in a large Southern city. The Negro businessman had …

Young people today have no spokesmen. The day of the youth league and its ideology seems to be over. Today we have the club again, and the gang, and perhaps the family. It might even be wrong to say that …

Michael Walzer has written a suggestive essay on American education [DISSENT, Spring and Summer 1959]. Yet, with all the thoughtfulness and knowledge he displays, I do not think that he has posed the key problems of American education. Walzer commits …

The rhetoric of equality is a staple of American speech; we devoutly abstain, however, from planning the practice of equality. The amazingly rapid expansion of American education in the past fifty years is indeed an occasion for pride: it is …