The “tax reform” legislation—which at this writing still awaits final approval by Congress and the president—has been acclaimed by conservatives and liberals alike. It would presumably distribute the tax burden more fairly, exempt most low-income earners or radically reduce their …
Michael Walzer’s “Notes on Public Space” is a valuable reopening of a debate that in the past has been very important to radical thought. I will here suggest that qualitative and aesthetic issues like this one may have an exemplary …
Having closely tracked the UAW for more than forty years of its fifty-year history, through two auto worker parents, three years on a Dodge main assembly line, a decade of working for it, and a husband with thirty-five years as …
At first glance, it’s a standard commercial for pain relievers—neutral background, earnest expert. Then, suddenly, this figure risks undermining the authority we had automatically ceded to him as he confides that “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on …
Karl Marx, writing in the 1840s, developed a perspective that can help us see why modern men and women have a special need for public space, and also why the historical forces that create this need make it especially hard …
Lester Thurow’s The Zero-Sum Society (Basic Books, 1982) provoked a storm of protest from liberals and leftists who charged that Thurow’s emphasis on the need for economic growth represented an abandonment of concern for working people and the poor. Apparently …
As Charles Krauthammer recounts in this collection of his essays, he came to the New Republic in the late 1970s because, “uniquely among intellectual organs, the New Republic was trying to rescue liberalism from its drift toward defeatist isolationism, and …
Taking the train from Westchester County to Grand Central Station, you pass some dreadful slums. The abandoned houses in these neighborhoods are boarded up, but some are adorned with fake windows—”Occupied-Look” decals—that are supposed to trick you into believing they …
Without fanfare, in the recession summer of 1982, the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO appointed a special committee to “review and evaluate changes that are taking place in America in the labor force, occupations, industries, and technology.” Who would have …
Is ectoplasm in short supply on Publishers Row? If not, I wonder why his publishers did not supply David Stockman with good ghosts for the manufacture of his best seller, cleverly but misleadingly called The Triumph of Politics. One darkly …
It was all to be expected: a few days after 221 members of the House of Representatives voted to provide the Nicaraguan “freedom fighters” with $100 million in new aid (plus another $400 million from the CIA’s “contingency” coffers), the …
The shape and character of public space is a central issue in city planning, and it has often been central, too, in political thought, especially on the left. Radical intellectuals live in cities, think of themselves as city people, imagine …
As we move toward the 1986 elections, the prospect of a U.S.-Soviet arms control agreement has become simultaneously more visible and more of a mirage. The sense of progress has been heightened by a rapid exchange of letters and public …
We live in an interesting age in the history of ethics. Over the past century, philosophers have posited a variety of conceptual frameworks for moral thinking, including utilitarianism, intuitionism, and emotivism. Each of these meta-ethical theories has captured some important …
This article forms the first chapter of Debora Silverman’s Selling Culture. In her introduction, Silverman writes that she wishes to depict a broad “movement of aristocratic invocation in 1980s American culture, whose participants combined representatives from the worlds of the …
