Every year the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) publishes a monograph titled Economic and Social Progress in Latin America. Most years the reports address a particular theme, some of them of narrow interest. Reading them can be tedious; they are written …
Begin by considering a thing of indisputable beauty and spiritual depth: the High Mass of the Roman Catholic Church. Does its obvious grandeur mean that the state should subsidize its performance? For those who say yes, the case for a …
As I write, the United States has all but entered into full-scale war in Yugoslavia. Almost forgotten in the current preoccupation with the Balkans is the endemic, smoldering combat being waged by America and its allies with Iraq. Ordinary Americans …
Two time honored beliefs about the media were dented by our impeachment year: the right-wing notion that the press has a “liberal bias” and the left-wing theory that the media control public consciousness. Thanks to independent counsel Kenneth Starr, both …
The 1970s to 1990s era has witnessed a new archaeology of the African American intelligentsia. This has involved a steady growth of conservatism among black intellectuals and, more recently, some ideological differentiation within conservative ranks. The early set of conservative …
When Transition 51 appeared in 1991, its editors could not have expected many readers to be acquainted with the magazine. Not only had its editorial offices migrated from East Africa to the northeastern United States, but it was emerging from …
With most European countries run by parties that identify themselves as social democratic or socialist, the French left faces a dual challenge: establishing sufficient cooperation with its neighbors in order to shape general European policies, and producing a blueprint for …
There is not space enough to answer all of Martin Kilson’s characterizations of myself and my essay. Some of these go to the heart of the question as to why I wrote the essay itself. Let me say in this …
The exhibition Freud: Conflict and Culture opened at the Library of Congress last October after several years of highly publicized controversy and one postponement. Not since King Tut came to New York’s Metropolitan Museum in the early seventies has an …
As the Lewinsky scandal unfolded, the New York Times was chronicling how New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani was straying from the straight and narrow path of political morality. The mayor’s actions deserve more attention than they have attracted, because, …
Why did the Russian economy go into a nosedive? Should one blame Russia? Or the capitalist system and especially financial markets? The crisis built up as the Russian government failed to collect the taxes it needed to finance its expenses. …
For anyone who cares about democratic values, the most significant thing about the impeachment debacle was the vapidity of the surrounding debate—its failure to raise serious questions about the structure or future of American democracy. This, and not the question …
Feminism’s ideological diversity makes fools of those who generalize grandly about the movement, but many critics are undeterred. A foolish view of feminists as a monolithic group of male bashers and prudes was eagerly adopted by impeachment pundits. Confusing feminism …
Buried deep in the New York Times metropolitan section on November 6, 1998, was an article I had been awaiting far too long: “7-Month Labor Dispute Is Over at 8 Jewish Cemeteries in Area.” I had been watching one group …
Did Bill Clinton’s impeachment crisis represent a continuation of the culture wars from the nineteen sixties? My three-part answer is: it did; did not; and vice versa. To wit: (1) The impeachment did represent a continuation of the old culture …
