Fall 2025

“When the legend becomes fact,” says Edmond O’Brien in John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “print the legend.” The process of printing the legend about the 2000 presidential election has now been well under way for some time; …

We devote this issue almost entirely to American politics, looking back to the disputed presidential election and forward to the administration of Bush II. The mix of articles is incomplete; we can’t cover everything at once. But the pieces add …

The California power crisis has made it clear to all but the most theory-besotted ideologues that “trusting the market” does not automatically solve economic problems. This comes as news to few readers of Dissent, but what went wrong is worth …

Imagine a corporate executive who’s been convicted of embezzlement. He serves his sentence and some years later, having paid his debt to society, leaves prison a free man. Now he’s an ex-convict, in fact, an ex-felon. Should we allow him …

It’s a sultry July morning; I am sitting on a low wall outside a three-story brownstone on West 120th Street, a stone’s throw away from Mount Morris Park, in Harlem. Four workmen, covered in dust and dirt, are coming and …

The year 2000 was the worst for the U.S. stock market in nearly two decades—but not for weapons makers. The share prices of the two biggest military contractors, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, hit new highs, while the Standard & Poor’s …

The River District was known as the place to go for dinner. Within a compact area of about six blocks were dozens of excellent restaurants of every variety. Most people would just park on the street and walk around, looking …

Our sacred dollar, reigning deity of the world’s currencies, has able prophets and apostles. And it needs them. Though it has soared this past decade, the dollar now faces rising domestic and global forces that seek to humble it. Do …

In his book Edge City, Joel Garreau tells the story of Bridgewater Township, a community of about forty thousand people located in New Jersey. Like earlier cities that were situated at the intersection of transportation routes, it owes its location …

Let us take Ellen Willis’s argument at its strongest points—something she does not do with ours. The core of her response is that supporting “a nationally visible challenge” to the corporate consensus helps “movement-building,” which in turn promotes “dealing with …

With the events of late in the year 2000, the United States left behind the era of constitutional republicanism and turned to a different form of government. It is not, however, a new form. It is, rather, a transplant, highly …

What is going on? The richest Americans are about to give themselves a big tax cut. The bigger the cut, the less money there will be for government programs that many less-than-rich Americans need. Ordinary greed is at work here, …

The “third way” is the subject of countless articles, op-ed columns, policy papers, international conferences, and the public pronouncements by heads of state from Bill Clinton to Gerhard Schroeder to Tony Blair. Anthony Giddens is clearly the most visible and …