bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Queasy Agnosticism
Authors: Rorty Richard
Published: February 2012

Once they could no longer believe in the immortality of the soul, many Westerners substituted the project of improving human life on Earth for that of getting to Heaven. Hoping for the achievement of Enlightenment ideals took the place of yearning to see the face of God. Spiritual life came to center around movements for social change, rather than around prayer or ritual.
Against the "Academic Intifada"
Authors: Hirsh David
Published: February 2012

An international campaign for a boycott of Israeli artists, musicians, teachers, thinkers, writers, and researchers calls itself the "Academic Intifada." Two years ago, it proposed that the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) should require its members to blacklist colleagues who worked for Israeli universities. This boycott was rejected by the AUT.
Welcome to 'Whole-Mart': Rotten Apples in the Social Responsibility Industry
Authors: Harris Mark T.
Published: February 2012

Where Wal-Mart has come under deserved scrutiny from labor, community, and feminist activists for its exploitive "big-box" business model and miserly wages, Whole Foods, the world's largest natural foods retailer, enjoys a reputation as a progressive trendsetter at the forefront of a "green lifestyle revolution" in American life. After all, a slogan like "Whole Foods, Whole Planet, Whole People" conjures up more ennobling vistas of planetary progress than, "We Sell for Less.
Editor's Page
Authors: Walzer Michael
Published: February 2012

This issue of Dissent features a strong group of articles on the sad state of American society today, shaped by too many years of frightened liberalism and arrogant reaction. All these pieces speak to a central issue of American politics as we prepare for congressional elections this fall (and, already, presidential elections in 2008): what kind of opposition should Democrats and the liberal-left generally mount to the Republican right? They suggest that the opposition must be substantive, principled, and angry.
Laid Off in America
Authors: Levinson Mark
Published: February 2012

Mark Levinson reviews Louis Uchitelle's The Disposable American .
Debt Education: Bad for the Young, Bad for America
Authors: Williams Jeffrey J.
Published: February 2012

student loans, for more than half those attending college, are the new paradigm of college funding. Consequently, student debt is, or will soon be, the new paradigm of early to middle adult life. Gone are the days when the state university was as cheap as a laptop and was considered a right, like secondary education. Now higher education is, like most social services, a largely privatized venture, and loans are the chief way that a majority of individuals pay for it. Over the past decade, there has been an avalanche of criticism of the "corporatization" of the university. Most of it focuses on the impact of corporate protocols on research, the reconfiguration of the relative power of administration and faculty, and the transformation of academic into casual labor, but little of it has addressed student debt. Because more than half the students attending university receive, along with their bachelor's degree, a sizable loan payment book, we need to deal with student debt.
French Crisis, Left Crisis: Report by a Compromised Social Democrat
Authors: Cohen Mitchell
Published: February 2012

Paris: The first thing I noted on arriving here at the New Year was the number of homeless in an especially cold winter. They seemed to me, a frequent visitor, to have expanded exponentially in recent years. Then, in ensuing months, I saw more and more people in the streets—not the homeless, but protesters. First in small clusters, later in larger numbers, and soon in large demonstrations. The principal target was a government bill, the CPE (Contrat première embauche or "First employment contract"), which allowed employers of large firms to fire new hires under age twenty-six without explanation within two years of taking them on. But there is a broader picture. The French word for "demonstration" is manifestation. A very uneasy society was manifesting itself loudly.
The Last Page
Authors: Wiener Jon
Published: February 2012

When Barrington Moore, Jr., died October 16 at age ninety-two, I remembered the mandatory meetings for coffee he scheduled with students at the place he called "the greasy spoon down the block" in Harvard Square. At the time—1966 and 1967—I had enrolled in his graduate seminars in the Harvard Government Department. He was tall and gaunt, and looked stern and humorless; we were all deeply intimidated by his knowledge of the history of pretty much everything. His new book, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, dealt with the histories of the United States, England, France, Russia, China, and India—displaying a breadth and depth that inspired awe.
A Tale of Two Hurricanes: Galveston and New Orleans
Authors: Mills Nicolaus
Published: February 2012

When we think of New Orleans and its recovery from Hurricane Katrina, the comparisons that come to mind most often are Chicago after the fire of 1871 and San Francisco after the earthquake of 1906. The Phoenix-like rise of these two cities seems like nothing so much as a lesson in how to rebuild after a disaster. But as the recovery of New Orleans languishes and its scattered poor struggle to take root elsewhere, there is a third city—Galveston, Texas—that we ought to consider when thinking of post-Katrina New Orleans. In contrast to Chicago and San Francisco, Galveston offers a cautionary tale that suggests recovery from a disaster can, even with the best of intentions, be limited in scope and close out rather than open up opportunity.
Abandoning the World Bank: Pitfalls When Right and Left Agree
Authors: Engler Mark
Published: February 2012

In 1994, activist groups mounted a unified campaign against the World Bank and its sister organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The two institutions were then celebrating a half-century in business, having been founded at the Bretton Woods conference near the end of the Second World War. The name of the activist coalition, and its slogan, was "50 Years Is Enough." The group's call to action against the international financial institutions seemed to come at an inopportune moment. The mid-1990s were high times for corporate globalization. Enthusiasm about the expanding "New Economy" was rising. The Clinton administration placed structures like the World Bank, the IMF, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) at the center of its foreign policy, and the march of economic neoliberalism seemed unstoppable.
The Democrats' Opportunity: Are They Ready?
Authors: Faux Jeff
Published: February 2012

Passive resistance could even help the Democrats win November's election. With the once fearsome Republican blitzkrieg bogged down in catastrophe in Iraq, incompetence in New Orleans, and corruption scandals in Washington, the Democrats may simply be the default option for voters disgusted with Bush, Tom DeLay, and Bill Frist. We will, of course, take any victory we can get. And a takeover of the House or Senate, or both, would presumably help prevent a lame-duck Bush administration from inflicting more damage on the nation and the world. But if the Democrats are to truly lead the country in another direction, they will need more vision and imagination than they have thus far demonstrated.
Collateral Benefit: Iraq and Increased Legitimacy for International Trusteeship
Authors: Jenkins Rob
Published: February 2012

It takes an almost reckless optimism to find a silver lining in the abject failure of basic institutions, let alone democracy, to take root in postwar Iraq. But look hard enough and it's possible to discern one: enhanced legitimacy in the international community for what has been called "neotrusteeship," an arrangement whereby multilateral institutions temporarily govern states that have collapsed in spasms of misrule and violent conflict.
Cold War Liberals and the Birth of Dissent
Authors: Barkan Joanne
Published: February 2012

No serious American magazine of the early 1950s championed the blend of politics that the future founders of Dissent espoused: unwavering opposition to both Stalinism and McCarthyism along with a commitment to the socialist ideal. Not having a comfortable home might make any group of like-minded intellectuals dream of its own magazine, but actually founding one—taking on the work, the responsibility, the headaches—usually requires more motivation. The future Dissenters had their motivation. Midway through the century that produced communism and fascism, they wanted to salvage a democratic socialist vision. And in the decade that produced the great American celebration of prosperity and freedom along with McCarthyism, they needed to take on the liberals.
In the Mexican Labyrinth: The Elections, the Left, and the Fight for the Mexican Soul
Authors: Jaramillo Angel
Published: February 2012

The election was not about particular policies, as has normally been the case in American elections; nor was it about party agendas, as in most European elections. It was about the soul of Mexico. Although issues and policies were sometimes discussed, their impact was marginal. What was at stake in the minds of many was nothing less than Mexico's destiny. To understand the ideological debate taking place in Mexico today one has to go back to a different time and place. The situation is not very different from that of the discussions that divided Slavophiles and Westernizers in Russia under the reign of Nicholas I. The tale of Mexico's last fifteen years might be read as a dramatic poem by Pushkin. In "The Bronze Horseman," the Russian poet set a scene where modernizers and Slavic melancholics are fighting to win the soul of poor young Yevgeny. The Tsar's statue, with its arm reaching out toward the future, was a symbol of modernity for many in St. Petersburg. In Mexico the end of the myth of revolution and the opening up of the country to the world—with NAFTA a key symbol—require a rejection of what many people, mostly from the left love dearly. But the time has come for Mexicans to escape from what anthropologist Roger Bartra has shrewdly called "the cage of melancholy" and embrace not an allegedly glorious past but a risky yet unavoidable future.
The Last Page
Authors: Linfield Susie
Published: February 2012

Ellen Willis, who died in November at the age of 64, was such a unique and wonderful set of contradictions—or seeming contradictions. She was a staunchly radical feminist who believed in pleasure, happiness, and freedom. She was a fierce polemicist on the page who, in person, was often painfully shy. She loved long nineteenth-century novels, but was an ardent reader of the tabloids. She was one of the most instinctively ethical people I have ever known, and yet she hated any hint of sanctimony or self-righteousness. She was a dyed-in-the-wool bohemian who was obsessed with real estate—which is to say, she was a true New Yorker. And for me, part of the fun, and the adventure, of being Ellen's friend and colleague was discovering that these disparate characteristics weren't really contradictions at all: that somehow, in her inimitable way, she had put all the pieces together.
Islam in the West
Authors: Hari Johann
Published: February 2012

Over the last few years, the world has watched jihadist assassinations on the streets of Amsterdam, civilian slaughter in Madrid and on the London Underground, France's car-and-vanities bonfire, and the global assault on Denmark after one of its newspapers dared to depict the Prophet Muhammad in a derogatory cartoon. For ordinary Europeans who pride ourselves on our multiculturalism and tolerance, the continent seems stranger and sadder. The windows of my apartment in London stare out toward the scene of a recent suicide-murder, and when they are open on a summer morning, the low wailing of a muezzin can be heard clearing the air. On the streets and in the mosques outside, jihadi young men distributing "death to democracy" leaflets subtly clash with young Muslim feminists who want an open, liberal Islam. Kaffiyas and head-scarves contrast with makeup and wonderbras in a bewildering Islamic cacophony.
Enforcing Human Rights
Authors: Geras Norman
Published: February 2012

Larry May has written a book on crimes against humanity that provides careful analysis of the core issues for anyone interested in this subject. The book is divided into four parts. In the first two, May explores the philosophical underpinnings of the concept of crimes against humanity and examines some of the most relevant norms of international law. The third and fourth parts are then concerned with issues of application. Although there is much of interest in these later sections of the book, this review focuses on the argument of its first two parts-on the philosophical case the author lays out and the normative principles central to it.
Recovering the Age of Social Democracy
Authors: Müller Jan-Werner
Published: February 2012

Twenty-five years ago the German historian Karl Dietrich Bracher wrote an influential book on twentieth-century European political history called The Age of Ideologies. It was a classic text of liberal antitotalitarianism and is still in use as a text for under-graduates—an indication, perhaps, that our views of the twentieth century haven't changed all that much: Europeans were seized by an ideological fever in or about 1917, and were only really cured in or about 1991; what triumphed, in the end, was liberalism—though less in the American than in the European sense. And whenever we're confronted with new antiliberal challenges, the ideological-fever story of the twentieth century is readily at hand: as "Islamo-fascism" or a "third totalitarianism." So we haven't really left the twentieth century behind, as is sometimes asserted. The question is rather who will get to tell its story and what lessons will be drawn from that story.
The Vanishing American Left?: Two Views
Authors: Piven Frances Fox
Published: February 2012

These articles by Frances Fox Riven and Michael Walzer are from talks given at a City University of New York symposium on "The Vanishing American Left" in September 2006. Todd Gitlin, who also spoke, drew upon his article in the Fall 2006 issue of Dissent, "Democratic Dilemmas: The Party and the Movements," to which we refer the reader.
Guns and Grief
Authors: Rubin Lillian B.
Published: February 2012

It’s time to put an end to the arguments about the meaning of the Second Amendment and come to terms with the social and political realities of the twenty-first century. Guns kill; it’s what they’re meant to do. And no spin by those stalwarts who insist on our right to carry guns can change the fact that their unregulated use has unleashed a murderous plague that kills and injures far too many victims every year. Yes, people will continue to kill each other even if we ban guns. But all the evidence, not to mention plain common sense, tells us that they can’t do it so efficiently and in such large numbers without the aid of a gun.
Against Academic Boycotts
Authors: Nussbaum Martha
Published: February 2012

It is difficult to see what is accomplished by a symbolic boycott that cannot be more effectively accomplished by one of the alternatives, such as censure or organized public protest. Censure makes a clear statement of exactly who has done what wrong to whom, and it is also voted on by a group, in the typical case, so it is also very clear who supports it. Boycotts have neither type of clarity. It is not clear what the reason for the boycott is, and indeed each individual may join the boycott for different reasons. I suspect in the case of Israel it would not be easy to find a single account of the reasons behind the boycott that would command the agreement of its participants. Nor is it clear who is doing it: in this case there are journals, professional associations, and individuals, all forming a loosely linked movement, and nothing as crisp as a voted-on resolution of censure. Organized public protest also has a superior clarity, because each group involved issues its own public statements, signed by its own officers or representatives, and so we know both who is speaking and what they are saying.
Globalization's Mad Scientist
Authors: Engler Mark
Published: February 2012

Joseph Stiglitz neither looks nor behaves like a polished politician. The sixty-four-year-old professor of economics at Columbia University fits the stereotype of the rumpled academic, rushing to lectures with his jackets wrinkled and gray hair unkempt. What he says in his public addresses also runs contrary to most policymakers' mannered declarations. Whether out of a willful desire to act impolitic or a simple ignorance of political calculations, Stiglitz has repeatedly violated the decorum of mainstream economic discussion. And in the process he has done more than perhaps any other individual to influence the unfolding debate about globalization.
Multiculturalism and Democracy
Authors: Lappin Shalom
Published: February 2012

A debate rages in Europe today on the role of multicultural policies in stimulating religiously motivated extremism, Islamism in particular. In this discussion, multiculturalism is generally understood as government support for the cultural and religious institutions of minority communities. The groups at its center are immigrants or their first- and second-generation descendants. Sustaining the language and cultures of the Scots and the Welsh in Britain or the Catalans and the Basques in Spain is not at issue, even when tensions between these indigenous groups and the majority population of their countries seriously threaten national cohesion. The issue is immigrants from Muslim countries, although other immigrant groups are frequently drawn into the controversy.
Work in Progress: The State of the Unions Two Years after the AFL-CIO Split
Authors: McNeill Jim
Published: February 2012

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney recently took a strange trip. It was a short one, just a half-mile or so from the federation's sandstone fortress near the White House to a sleek, smoked-glass office building that America's fastest growing union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), was dedicating as its new head-quarters. What made Sweeney's appearance at the January dedication so strange was that SEIU—the union he led in the eighties and nineties—had stormed out of the AFL-CIO less than two years earlier and established the rival Change to Win (CTW) federation with six other unions. Back then, many feared a bitter war would break out between the two federations and that an already dwindling labor movement would disappear completely. Yet, there in SEIU's glass-walled atrium, with beatific portraits of workers all around, the breakaway union's staff applauded warmly when Sweeney was introduced. Though he didn't speak at the ceremony, Sweeney stayed for the reception and chatted with old friends in the crowd.
Arlene Skolnick Responds
Authors: Skolnick Arlene
Published: February 2012

I will begin with a general comment, then discuss the specific points raised by Michael B. Katz and Mark J. Stern. There is a great deal of public anxiety about the dramatic family changes of the past several decades, and news about the disappearing or declining family has become a media staple. Conservatives have honed this pervasive "decline" theme into a potent political weapon. The "D" word supplies the symbolism and emotional force for right-wing social policies—abolish welfare, promote marriage, ban gay unions. And the word evokes the a simple before-and-after narrative that explains it all: before the sixties, all was well with the American family; then came the counterculture and feminism, the moral collapse of the family, and the host of social pathologies we have today.
Michael Walzer Responds
Authors: Walzer Michael
Published: February 2012

Jerry Slater's polemic is notable most of all for its exaggerations. I am indeed a supporter of Israel, and only wish that I was as eminent, authoritative, prominent, well known, and influential as he says I am—for then I would be a far more useful supporter than I have been. I would also be a more useful critic. Israel needs its supporters, because it is the only state in the world whose legitimacy is widely denied and whose destruction is publicly advocated and threatened. And it needs its critics so that its response to those denials and threats is held within the necessary moral limits. But the critics, if they are to be useful, must get the denials and threats right. Slater minimizes them throughout his piece, as when he says that Hezbollah is committed to Israel's destruction "at least on the ideological level"—by which he means, it's really just talk; the commitment doesn't affect political practice. But I am afraid that Islamic militants give every sign of believing in the old left maxim about the unity of theory and practice.
Heated Conversations
Authors: Stansell Christine
Published: February 2012

After years of feminist pressure to integrate the bylines of America's journals and newspapers of record, women's opinion pieces and political commentary remain scarce. Flora Lewis and Elizabeth Drew were notable forerunners, but the real change came with the women who broke into print in the late 1980s and 1990s: a group that included Barbara Ehrenreich, Gail Collins, Maureen Dowd, Ellen Goodman, and Katha Pollitt. To varying degrees, they transformed the voice of the pundit on high to an identifiably female one, routinely treating "women's" issues, setting up confiding relationships with readers, and using feminist tartness as a weapon of choice when it came to deflating and skewering enemies.
Beyond Discrimination: Understanding African American Inequality in the Twenty-First Century
Authors: Katz Michael B. , Stern Mark J.
Published: February 2012

In November 2007, two reports by distinguished research centers turned African American inequality into national news. Their startling and discomfiting data highlighted both the fragility of African American success and the widening fault lines that divide African Americans from each other. Impressive and authoritative as the reports are, they nonetheless remain incomplete because they do not explain how and why African American inequality has changed during the last several decades or the place of gender and publicly supported work in the new black inequality. These omissions matter because adequate and realistic responses to the issues raised by the reports require grasping the sources of the revolutionary changes that have left blacks at once more and less equal. Black inequality no longer results from powerful and interlocking forms of public and private discrimination and oppression. Rather, it is the product of processes beginning with childhood that sort African Americans into more or less favored statuses, differentiating them by class and gender.
Capitalism as Catastrophe
Authors: Engler Mark
Published: February 2012

A strange contradiction afflicts nonhierarchical social movements. Those activists who are most hesitant to create formal mechanisms for naming leaders give the media the most power to choose their leaders for them. Certainly this has been the case in the globalization movement, where an anarchist ethos has prevailed. Faced with a vast network of affinity groups, spokescouncils, and local organizations, the news media have been desperate to find a few recognizable figures to present as figureheads. They have thrust a handful of writers and intellectuals into the spotlight—one of the most notable being thirty-seven-year-old Canadian journalist Naomi Klein.
Primary Obligations: Why the Democrats Should Fix the Nominating System
Authors: Greenberg David
Published: February 2012

Supporters of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, for all their differences, have in the course of this emotional primary season come to view the Democratic Party's nominating process as seriously flawed. To be sure, Obama's enthusiasts would seem to have little reason to complain, while Clinton's own errors, tactical and strategic, wounded her at least as much as any kinks in the system. Yet, it became apparent this past spring that in such a tight race, with the candidates effectively tied, various procedural injustices that might otherwise be waved off—the length of the season, the (theoretical) king-making power of the superdelegates, the decisive influence of caucuses and open primaries, the effective disfranchisement of two elector-rich swing states—influenced and perhaps altered the race's outcome. Even if the candidates muster the obligatory shows of unity this summer, at this writing (May) it seems that the party will have to address the procedural pitfalls exposed this year.
Violence on the Left: Nandigram and the Communists of West Bengal
Authors: Nussbaum Martha C.
Published: February 2012

After a period of relative impotence, the Hindu-supremacist right in India has rebounded, with the December reelection of Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Narendra Modi as chief minister in Gujarat. Modi's role in the mass murders of Muslims in that state in February 2002 has long been so well documented that he has been denied a visa to enter the United States. Recently, moreover, extensive corroboration of his role was elicited by a hidden-camera inquiry conducted by the news-magazine Tehelka. Despite overwhelming evidence that he is a mass murderer extraordinaire—or perhaps, because of it—Modi defied media predictions, and even exit polls, to win by a landslide, a victory in which fund-raising and politicking by Indians residing in the United States (40 percent of Indian Americans are Gujarati) played a large role. Because the rival Congress Party, which controls the central government in a coalition, understands well the intense hatred of Muslims that animates many Gujarati Hindus, leading politicians tiptoed around the issue of sectarian violence, hoping to defeat the BJP in Gujarat on its weak economic record. Only Sonia Gandhi, courageously and repeatedly, denounced Modi's reign of blood. (American Gujaratis responded with an e-mail campaign denouncing Gandhi in abusive language.) Hitler is revered as a hero in school textbooks in Gujarat. In Modi, those who worship at that shrine seem to have found the type of leader they seek. Let's hope that the nation as a whole does not embrace his charismatic call to hate.
Rising Productivity, Deepening Inequality
Authors: Brand Horst
Published: February 2012

Last January, the New York Times reported that assembly line workers at Detroit automobile factories, who have been earning around $28 per hour, would be "bought out" and gradually replaced by workers earning as little as half of that. This would save companies like Ford and Chrysler $30,000 per lower paid worker per year, in addition to reductions in benefits. It would also mean—though this escaped the Times reporter—that output per hour (productivity) would remain unchanged or, more likely, continue to improve (as it has hitherto in the industry). "Two-tier agreements, double-digit wage cuts, health care cost shifts, work rule changes, and defined pension . . . rollbacks have occurred in one major contract settlement after another. . . . In one industry alone, airlines, wage and pension concessions given back to employers since 2001 . . . totaled over $15 billion," writes Labor Notes (January 2008). Yet, output per hour in air transportation rose at an average annual rate of 2.9 percent between 1987 and 2005, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS); it rose 3.8 percent in motor vehicles manufacturing. These two examples illustrate what is happening to the bargaining power of trade unions—a steady weakening, a loss that began with the defeat of the air traffic controllers strike in 1981 by Ronald Reagan's administration, a loss, therefore, that is political in nature. And it is in this sense that we must view the widening gap between the advances of productivity and the stagnation of working people's incomes.
What Would Jefferson Do?: How Limited Government Got Turned Upside Down
Authors: Daly Lew
Published: February 2012

In the fall of 1964, Ronald Reagan went on national television to tell the American people about a growing tyranny in their midst, "subtler, but no less dangerous" than Soviet communism. He also told them to cast their presidential vote for Barry Goldwater, who was ready to tame this new political beast and put a stop to those people who would "trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state." Now known simply as "The Speech," it was a performance that launched the extreme right wing of the country from the political margins into the highest seats of government. The resulting political realignment sharply affected how wealth and power are distributed in our society. Less often noted than his frightening analogies with communism was Reagan’s view that the welfare state violated the "freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers." As Reagan declared in The Speech, "The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing."
Asia Looms over Latin America
Authors: Colburn Forrest D.
Published: February 2012

An anecdote from business circles in Latin America tells of a textile manufacturer in El Salvador, who, reeling from Chinese competition, travels to China and visits the sprawling plant of one of his competitors. He knows that Chinese labor costs are only a third of his costs. And he knows, too, that the undervaluation of the Chinese currency gives the country's exporters another cost advantage in world markets, some calculating it to be 10 percent. What amazes him the most, though, is his visit to the floor of the Chinese textile plant. It is huge, with many economies of scale. The equipment is new, the technology sophisticated. As the Salvadoran businessman takes it all in, he suddenly notices that none of the workers-all women-is wearing glasses. He asks, "How is it that none of your employees wear glasses?" "Oh no," he is told, "as soon as the women develop problems with their eyes we get rid of them.
The Three Lefts Of Latin America
Authors: Walker Ignacio
Published: February 2012

I began to write these lines while listening to a speech by Hugo Chávez at a summit of the Andean Community of Nations in Lima, Peru, some time in 2005. As inspiration for this article, the speech helped crystallize my thinking. Populism in Latin America has a lot to do with discourse, rhetoric, and symbolism, and I came to understand many things about this kind of politics that are not to be found in the literature. I want now to describe the inherent tensions and contradictions of old and new populism in Latin America, especially as they relate to democracy. I will then consider the emergence in recent years of a new social democratic left characterized by an unambiguous commitment to democratic institutions. For there is not one (populist), not two (Marxist and populist), but at least three lefts in Latin America (populist, Marxist, and social democratic). Hugo Chávez may be the most visible and strident Latin American political figure, but he is not the most representative. In fact, he is the exception rather than the rule.
Reflections of a Sometime Israel Lobbyist
Authors: Fein Leonard
Published: February 2012

Here's a secret, the kind we hardly acknowledge to ourselves. But first, you may be wondering who this "we" is, on whose behalf I am writing. In truth, I am not sure. Maybe it is the Jews. But the problem with "Jews" is—well, not all Jews are in on the secret. Or maybe it is the Zionists. But the problem with "Zionists" is that the word has come to seem musty, at best, and in these last several decades it has been appropriated by exclusivist fanatics. So let me spell it out: the "we" here means old-fashioned liberal Zionists, people who intuitively endorse the idea of a Jewish state, people who acknowledge that to secure the safety of that state and to ennoble its character are the compelling Jewish projects of our time, hence people who these days suffer considerable anxiety and are not strangers to disappointment. Things are not going very well, or even just average well.
Mercenaries and the Markets
Authors: Smoler Fred
Published: February 2012

On September 16, 2007, security guards employed by Blackwater, a now-famous American security contractor—one of a class of businesses known in modern parlance as PMFs, or privatized military firms—killed seventeen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad and wounded another twenty-four. The New York Times subsequently reported that since 2005 Blackwater employees had fired weapons in Iraq on one hundred and ninety-five occasions, and an ongoing FBI investigation has so far determined that at least fourteen of the September killings were wholly unjustified. Blackwater is probably the only PMF most Americans can name; its celebrity springs from both the recent scandal and from an incident predating the September massacre. At the end of March 2004, four of its employees were murdered, mutilated, dismembered, burned, and suspended from a bridge in Fallujah, in an eerily protracted rite that triggered the first round of major combat in that city. For a couple of months at the end of 2007 Blackwater became emblematic of a trend worth following: the remarkable increase in private sector military firms since the early 1990s. With the eclipse of the war in Iraq by the troubles of the housing and credit markets, Blackwater and the phenomena it has been taken to represent are receding from public view, which is regrettable, because the recent and vertiginous rise of PMFs richly deserves increased attention.
Norman Mailer (1924-2007)
Authors: Bromwich David
Published: February 2012

Norman Mailer came to public attention as the young author of a best-selling novel of 1948, The Naked and the Dead. It quickly became one of three war novels by Americans that any reader of that generation was likely to know; the others were James Jones's From Here to Eternity and Irwin Shaw's The Young Lions. Mailer's was the most complex in design and the most ambitious in what it aimed to say, not about the war but about American society as seen through the institutions of war. An antiwar book (in some broad sense), it was, more emphatically, anti-statist and anti-militarist.
Barack Obama in the Public Imagination
Authors: Wellington Darryl Lorenzo
Published: February 2012

By the time this article sees print, our eyes will have blurred from reading that Barack Obama, the first African American to win the presidential nomination of a major party, has accomplished a feat that many Americans would not have believed possible in their lifetime. Whether he wins or not, the campaign for the office of the presidency is symbolic in itself, and the issue of race heightened the Obama campaign's emotional and symbolic resonance. Obama simultaneously cast himself as black and postracial—or, better, as a black candidate looking toward a postracial future. He frequently cites his biracial heritage, moving audiences to tears with stories of his Kenyan father and white mother from Kansas. His "change" message emphasizes the dream that America can transcend race and calls for a shift (partially generational) away from the old mind-set of divisiveness (black/white, red state/blue state) and toward a new consensus that will unite (to quote from Obama's South Carolina victory speech) "the most diverse coalition of Americans we've seen in a long, long time. They are young and old; rich and poor. They are black and white; Latino and Asian. They are Democrats from Des Moines and Independents from Concord; Republicans from rural Nevada and young people across this country who've never had a reason to participate until now."
Olympic Boycotts: Always Tricky
Authors: Young Christopher
Published: February 2012

When it comes to finding the bad guys of Olympic history, all roads lead to Germany. Writing in the New York Times at the height of the torch relay fracas in April this year, Edward Rothstein pointed the way: "If you want to know how the Olympic torch really began its 'Journey of Harmony,' as the Chinese call its current relay, if you want to see why the torch has had to pass through a human obstacle course composed of protesters, SWAT teams, and police in San Francisco, Paris, and London, then do not look to Tibet's grievances against China. Look to the opening of Leni Riefenstahl's 1938 film, "Olympia." In that homage to Berlin's 1936 Olympic Games the origins of this ritual are revealed. Never before had a lighted torch been relayed from a Greek temple in Olympia to an athletic competition, let alone by thousands of runners trying to keep it from being extinguished.
After Communism: Travails of Democratization
Authors: Avineri Shlomo
Published: February 2012

Determining when one period gave way to another or, in fact, naming a period is always a tricky matter. This is especially so when it comes to contemporary events. Processes are still going on and it is not yet evident what conclusive outcome, if any, is going to take shape. Nonetheless, it is already possible to look at postcommunism in Central and Eastern Europe with some perspective, and to reach some tentative conclusions. The first is that three periods or stages have unfolded. In the opening phase there was near-messianic enthusiasm and redemptive hope. Then came a time of differentiation when views became nuanced. The third period is characterized by introspection mixed with disenchantment.
Dystopia and the End of Politics
Authors: Kunkel Benjamin
Published: February 2012

In retrospect, the nineties can seem an anomalous decade, the only one since the Second World War when technological civilization did not appear particularly bent on self-destruction. Of course, not everyone greeted the end of the cold war as the dawning of a millennium of capitalist democracy, but even dismayed leftists tended to forecast the coming century by extrapolating from current trends. These included increased liberalization of trade, increased commodification of natural resources (such as water) and human roles (such as fertilization, courtship, and the care of the elderly), the internationalization of culture, continual advances in digital technology and genetic science, the rolling back of governmental authority to its police powers, and regular elections to ratify it all. This vision, whether taken for a nightmare or a dream, was of a world integrated under a total market and consecrated to private as opposed to public life: the "private sector" of corporations, and the "private life" of households. You called this tendency globalization if you liked it, neoliberalism if you didn't. Either way, the sense was that capitalism would, for the foreseeable future, consolidate its achievements rather than undermine them.
Sectarianism
Authors: Margalit Avishai
Published: February 2012

In the gloomy days after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, a delegation of intellectuals from the United States came to Jerusalem. There were no visitors in Israel at the time, and they were perhaps the first to arrive. It was after the war and just before the elections. I was on the slate of a leftist party called Moked. It was a tiny party. We knew almost all our voters by name. The quality of the supporters was never in doubt-it was the party of the left intelligentsia-but the numbers were very much in doubt.
The Untold Health Care Story: How They Crippled Medicare
Authors: Rubin Lillian B.
Published: February 2012

Until recently, my husband and I had been seeing one of those "Oh-I'm-so-glad-he's-my-doctor" physicians for two decades. Then one day the mail brought the announcement that the office was closing its doors and that the four doctors who had been in the practice were either retiring or leaving San Francisco. They enclosed a list of doctors who, they said, had indicated they had room in their practices. So started my search for a new primary-care physician. I looked the list over, saw a familiar name, and dialed the number. "Yes," the receptionist assured me, "doctor is taking new patients." It was all very friendly; I made an appointment; she set about recording the necessary information, and then the crucial question. "What insurance do you have?" "Medicare and AARP" (one of the several medi-gap insurance plans to which those of us who can afford it subscribe), I replied. I heard a small intake of breath, a ten-second silence that felt like much more, and then, "Oh, you should have told me before that you're Medicare; doctor isn't taking new Medicare patients." And with that she severed the connection and, I assume, wiped my appointment off the book.
Style and Passion in Tocqueville
Authors: Berman Paul
Published: February 2012

Tocqueville is a writer of immense emotional power, and the secret of that power lies in the poetic rhythms of his prose; and, in the whole of Democracy in America, no chapter offers a clearer or more vivid demonstration of those rhythms and their effect than "The Jury in the United States Considered as Political Institution." The editors of Dissent have selected their sundry quotations for commentary from that one chapter; but, with the readers' indulgence, I would like to restore the quotations to Tocqueville's original setting in order to lay out, in the imagination, the entire chapter in free verse. "The Jury in the United States," set in verse, begins with an extended strophe of five lines or paragraphs, in this form.
Modernism in the Streets
Authors: Berman Marshall
Published: February 2012

Marshall Berman revies Peter Gay's Modernism: The Lure of Heresy .
Consumer Nation?
Authors: Abrams Richard M.
Published: February 2012

A blooming industry among pundits, journalists, historians, and others celebrates, although more often deplores, America as "a consumer society." One prize-winning historian has described the country as "A Consumer's Republic," suggesting that consumers own the place. Another argues how consumers "shaped" American politics even from the very beginning of the nation in the eighteenth century. Still another argues that it was consumer interests that "fueled liberal politics" from at least the beginning of the twentieth century. [1] Not everyone agrees on what is meant by the term. But the elements of the idea include the importance of consumer goods for recreation, for creature comforts, for self-esteem, for social standing, for the country's prosperity, and in general for Americans' access to affluence.
Sin-Yee Chan Responds
Authors: Chan Sin-Yee
Published: February 2012

Daniel A. Bell engages in the timely and worthy task of looking at an important social issue in East Asia—the employment of domestic workers—from a Confucian perspective. In Hong Kong, for example, live-in foreign domestic helpers (most domestic helpers in Hong Kong and Taiwan are foreign women) constituted 7 percent of the total labor supply in 2001. These helpers contribute to the economic power of married women and consequently the gender equality of the society as they enable married women to participate actively in the work force. Yet the practice also creates racial discrimination and other social problems.
John Atlas and Peter Dreier Respond
Authors: Atlas John , Dreier Peter
Published: February 2012

We, too, were big fans of The Wire and are sorry that it is off the air. It touched a nerve among Americans who are hungry for a society that brings out the best in people—a society that encourages hope rather than fear. In the past few years, we've witnessed a growing concern about poverty and inequality bubbling up from the grassroots, and just now surfacing in our national political life. America today has the biggest concentration of income and wealth since 1928. A growing number of working families are in debt, while the number facing foreclosure has spiraled. American workers face declining job security. The cost of housing, food, health care, and other necessities is rising faster than incomes. Since George W. Bush took office, an additional five million Americans are living in poverty.
Who's Afraid of the European Radical Right?
Authors: Mudde Cas
Published: February 2012

Many observers of European politics warn that democracy on the continent is in peril. Conservative authors argue that European governments are threatened by a spineless surrender to "Islamofascism," while liberals fret that Europe is being overtaken by "ghosts of a tortured past," that is, parties on the "far Right." Whereas the Islamofascism argument lacks empirical substance and is mostly based on (Islamo)phobia, the "tortured past" claim is largely the result of conceptual confusion and an exaggeration of reality. Neither contemporary European democracies nor the contemporary "far Right" groups are similar to their "equivalents" in the 1930s. The contemporary populist radical Right does not dominate European politics, and democracies on the continent have been resilient in the face of this new challenge.
The Rhetoric of Choice: Segregation, Desegregation, and Charter Schools
Authors: Erickson Ansley T.
Published: February 2012

Over the last decade, talk of choice in education has reached an unprecedented pitch, and the talk has brought forth extensive dollars and human energy. Advocates for school choice, which has become a pseudonym for charter school reform, claim that changing how individual students end up at one school rather than another will contribute to significantly expanded access to quality
education. Forty years ago, many American communities began to reorganize student assignment
on a massive scale. Court-ordered busing for desegregation radically altered how students were assigned to schools and on what criteria. It is worth looking at that historical moment to understand the nature and limitations of the present debate. Although desegregation may seem a remnant of a distant era, reinterpreting the history of desegregation raises important cautions for the current interest in charter schools.
Egypt's Labor Pains: For Workers, the Revolution Has Just Begun
Authors: Paul Ari
Published: February 2012

This past spring, Western and Egyptian media alike attributed the explosive Tahrir Square protests to organizing by middle-class movements of students and intellectuals, battling for political freedom and armed with social media. This popular narrative holds that it was only when young people ignited a popular uprising that Egyptian workers shut down the country's ports and public services in solidarity. But history indicates the opposite, that years of labor organizing laid the groundwork for today's protests and will determine whether working Egyptians have a stake in the state that is emerging.
What Is Democratic Architecture?: The Public Life of Buildings
Authors: Ockman Joan
Published: February 2012

Democracy: A Man-Search, a book by Louis Sullivan, was first published fifty years ago, although he wrote it in 1908. The great Chicago architect completed what is a kind of 350-page prose poem at a moment when his career was at a low ebb. Its belated publication and the obscurity into which it has fallen are not surprising. By turns declamatory and almost deranged, evoking Whitman and Nietzsche, the book virtually guaranteed that architects, its most likely readers, would ignore it, as it did not mention architecture at all. Yet the idea of democracy it put forth is the same as that which Sullivan propounded in all his writings on American architecture.