About the Election  

For my sins, I turned the tv on in time to hear Pat Robertson at the Republican convention. His main accusation against Dukakis was that the Governor is a member of the ACLU—the godless American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU …



The Earth Still Turns  

Tremendously important changes are taking place in the world today, so rapidly it often seems impossible to keep track. The great powers are starting to back away from their military interventions, not because they have concluded that lions should lie …



About the Election  

A clever and capable man, Michael Dukakis is the kind of politician the Democrats once could produce with ease from year to year. He happens to be the first of his kind whom they have found to run for president …



A Use for Poverty  

A society that won’t spend the money to keep murderers and rapists behind bars is understandably puzzled about how to deal with nonviolent criminals. We hesitate to toss bribe-takers and stock-manipulators into the pokey with cutthroats and muggers. Yet we …



Gorbachev and Eastern Europe  

The history of postwar Eastern Europe begins with “Yalta.” Why quotation marks? “Yalta” signifies more than the historical meeting of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill in the Crimea, in February 1945. “Yalta” signifies a major trend in the wartime diplomatic efforts …



Biotechnology: Big Money Comes to the University  

American universities in the 1980s have witnessed some striking developments at that tender point where academic research meets big business and big government. Some of the most dramatic of these have involved technologies of genetic engineering—biotechnology, for short—with their much-contested …



About the Election  

I was embarrassed at first to admit how good I felt about the Democratic party convention; then I realized that the four evenings I spent in front of the tv were a training period—like an athlete’s spring training for a …





Constraints and Limitations  

Is Socialism Doomed? is an elegant analysis of the experience of the French left in power after 1981. The general reader will learn much about France and its left from the book. Singer combines two rare qualities—a compelling writing style …



About the Election  

There is something fundamentally wrong in the country, and the country knows it. It is not that families sit around the dinner table talking about deindustrialization and federal deficits and the new underclass. It is rather that people feel what …



What Should We Be Teaching?  

A debate is now going forward—sometimes raging, sometimes smoldering—over the kind of curriculum that should be offered to college students in literature and the humanities generally. For example, core humanities classes are sometimes offered to freshmen and sophomores as a …



A Statement on Social Policy  

As socially concerned people in labor unions, women’s organizations, welfare rights associations, church organizations, aboriginal groups, and other community associations, we are alarmed by signs of deepening social crisis in Canada today. Plant shutdowns, farm bankruptcies, business failures, and abandoned …



The Ruling Class  

Many sociologists deny there is a ruling class. Paul Fussell says there is one—but it is “top out of sight.” Albert Gore, George Bush, Robert Dole, and Richard Gephardt accused each other of belonging to it but wouldn’t be caught …