The Editors

From time to time, a most unlikely book strikes the public imagination and becomes something of a best seller. A case in point is Donald Kagan’s Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy (Free Press). The book’s reception was undoubtedly aided by the triumph of democratic ideas so . . . . Continue Reading »

Here is a review in a national publication of a book about religion in American public life. The title of the review is “Church-State Conflict Revived.” But that is not what the book is about, as the review itself makes quite clear. The book is about, inter alia, the perduring force of religion . . . . Continue Reading »

News stories of recent months underscore the fact that the place of Martin Luther King, Jr. in our national mythology is still not secure. Perhaps that should not surprise us. Myth-making in a nation so large and various as ours takes time. In that light, the twenty-three years since Dr. King’s . . . . Continue Reading »

From time to time, a set of concerns reaches something like a critical mass. Familiar discontents vaguely felt turn into more focused anxieties, and then, all of a sudden it seems, a passel of scholars arrives at a similar analysis of what has gone so thoroughly wrong—and some similar ideas of . . . . Continue Reading »

“Who has been handing out these permission slips?” asks a writer of our acquaintance. He wants to know who determined that it is alright again to tell racist jokes in polite society, or to publish columns suggesting, none too gingerly, that Jews have excessive influence in American life. . . . . Continue Reading »

It has become commonplace in the last year or so to refer to “the end of the Cold War” and the “collapse of Communism.” Sometimes it is even noted—by people concerned more with accuracy than etiquette—that America and the West won the Cold War. But the end of the Cold War, our victory in . . . . Continue Reading »

The best way to win an argument is to control the terms of discussion. Any high school debater knows that, and those of us who forget it do so at the risk of finding ourselves in awkwardly defensive modes of public discourse.Take the current and curious case of the term “homophobia,” a . . . . Continue Reading »

Congress has created the Christopher Columbus Quincentenary Jubilee Commission. To date, twenty-two states have established similar commissions to coordinate a wide range of activities celebrating the discovery of America. The National Council of Churches (NCC) is having none of it. In May the . . . . Continue Reading »

Socialism is dead, and, except within certain academic and religious circles, there will be few mourners. A system that in Marx’s vision would result in economic abundance and political liberation wound up in practice as economically ruinous and politically tyrannical. The world is well rid of . . . . Continue Reading »

The nation braces itself for yet another round of moral indignation against moral indignation. The first indignation is that of publishers, booksellers, and sundry civil libertarians in a state of alarm about the second group of indignants who are doing battle against smut. The first indignants howl . . . . Continue Reading »