Few photographs are more heartrending than the classic “madonna shot,” the one of the thin, wan refugee mother and her dull-eyed baby. It is often used to bring to public attention the private sufferings of thousands of human beings caught …
We live in what historian Lawrence Goodwyn has called “an age of sophisticated despair.” Centralized corporate structures and the modern bureaucratic state acquire an eerie life of their own, take on autonomous power in much the same sense that Marx …
As every lay analyst of U.S. national elections knows, the first law of electoral economics is that good economic news favors the party in power and bad economic news hurts its chances. This is not to say that economic conditions …
It is hard to believe: American women spend about as much time on housework today as they did one or two centuries ago. In the 18th century, to take an example, when fine wheat flour replaced homegrown corn and rye …
Even for committed democrats, it has never been obvious how extensive democratic practices should be. What is the appropriate extent of democratic government, and where, other than in the political realm, is democracy the proper principle of authority? During the …
“It’s been a good convention,” said Machinist President William Winpisinger, who four years earlier had walked out on the last night of the Democratic National Convention rather than support the Carter ticket. “The Democrats have had their spirit restored. They’ve …
Popular perceptions of sex differences—lately embodied in the Reagan era’s “gender gap”—too often are based on presupposed innate attributes or those set early in life. This division of the world into men’s and women’s roles has generated invidious comparisons: the …
I had a dream the other night, no doubt triggered by recent behavior in the oil market, of a way in which $5/barrel oil could be obtained on a more or less permanent basis. With all the fuss over falling …
When we talk politics at home, in a bar, or at a party—that is, wherever there are no bulbs flashing or cameras rolling—there’s at least a good chance we’ll speculate, “Will the Democrats/Republicans raise/lower taxes and the Congress vote in/out …
Not long ago, my seniors’ writing class at MIT considered the essay of one student—a kind, strapping fellow: no fool—on a political subject of his choice, of all things, the virtues of prostitution. Well, not the virtues of it, exactly, …
The Reagan administration’s assault on the rights of minorities and women has focused on the existing policy of affirmative action. This strategy may be shrewd politics but it is mean-spirited morally and insupportable legally. The attack on affirmative action is …
Say what you will about Ronald Reagan, he seems never to have supposed that we live in a time marked by “the end of ideology.” It’s also true that he may never have heard of the phrase. But with those intuitive …
The jacket of this book presents an image that its text carefully challenges: a 1937 photograph of a Munich street shows a crowd ecstatically saluting Nazi leaders on parade; underlining the apparent conformity, two small children ape their elders, ranged …
The history of the last half-millennium can be written as the story of rising classes, each pronouncing itself a universal class that embodies the general good. More narrowly, just as Virginia gentlemen stressed the virtues of breeding and farmers extolled …
I saw prophets tearing at their pasted-on beards I saw imposters joining sects of flagellants butchers disguised in sheepskin who fled the anger of the people playing on a block flute I saw I saw I saw a man who …
