Here is a thought experiment for the left. It requires a bit of historical imagination, something for which the left is known. Its political implications are weighty. So weighty, I think, that the answer-your answer, Comrade Reader-to the question I …
Paul Starr’s The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications
The recent French debate about laïcité (secularism or secularity), which was expressed revealingly in the passage of a law that bans the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols in schools, surprises many foreign observers. In fact, the word laïcité does not …
I went to Israel to talk, and I talked a lot, but I did my best to listen, too. On my first day, I sat in a Jerusalem café with Z, a comparative literature student, who told me that just …
The fiftieth anniversary celebration of Brown v. Board of Education leads uncomfortably to a South Carolina country town named Summerton. With a population of barely one thousand, Summerton seems too culturally unimpressive a place to have ever participated in a …
Sheila and David Rothman’s The Pursuit of Perfection: The Promise and Perils of Medical Enhancement, David Healy’s Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship Between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression, and Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness from The President’s Council on Bioethics
What hurts more? Torture in Abu Ghraib prison by Saddam Hussein’s thugs or torture in Abu Ghraib by American brutes? Torture to sustain a vicious dictatorship or torture in the name of democracy? A torture victim might be excused for …
As the election media wars heat up, both Democrats and Republicans are looking for an edge, whether it means finding an ad that will appeal to swing voters like the “NASCAR dads” or figuring out how to get more of …
The Republicans, I rejoice to report, are an unhappy family these days. They even bear some resemblances to the Democrats during the Vietnam era. Their base, to be sure, is not shattering: it remains foursquare behind George W. Bush. But …
Looking at a Photograph of Suffering
The war in Iraq was an unjust war. It was illegal in terms of international law and immoral in terms of the minimum thresholds for humanitarian and “democratic” intervention. It was also a deeply irrational war from the “realist” perspective, …
Responsibility and Judgment by Hannah Arendt and Letters 1925-1975: Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, edited by Ursula Ludz
Physicist Richard Feynman once said, “Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself.” The “way” involves minimizing bias through a peer-review process and performing experiments that rely on personal perceptions as little as possible when gathering data. Today, …
From Bam to Lisbon
In recent years, anti-establishment and anti-immigration populism has unsettled Western and Central Europe. Leaders such as Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, Jörg Haider in Austria, Silvio Berlusconi and Gianfranco Fini in Italy, Christoph Blocher in Switzerland, and the late Pim …
