Editor's Page
Cohen, Mitchell
AMERICA NEEDS "values." That is the conservative harangue. But to think about values? That's something else. n They get away with sanctimony. Do I exaggerate? Return (0 return!) to our...
...n But democratic citizens, secular and religious, can debate public values—can debate means and ends—intelligently, productively, and together without religious correctness...
...Is it the prophet Amos, calling for justice...
...Presumably this will check adultery and also save them in any recessionary hereafter...
...Others think values lead to The Market, but worry that markets also threaten values...
...But in a democracy, the public square is a domain of intellectual scrutiny, not immunity...
...Yes, some speak in good, if often imperious, faith...
...Or how market values create a "tourism plantation" in "paradise" (read Gordon Lafer's account of labor struggles in Hawai'i...
...I wonder...
...n Democratic adulterers don't do everything wrong, not according to our Supreme Court-anointed president...
...Democratic adulterers...
...That's why they killed Christ...
...What they resist is open inquiry into their beliefs there...
...n It's not just the Republicans: Senator Joe Lieberman does his bit for the Democrats...
...DeLay's comrade Attorney General John Ashcroft has Biblestudy classes in the Justice Department...
...George W. Bush wants "faith-based organizations" to take more charge of "poverty work," which means, I suppose, more charge of poor people...
...inquiry makes you a foe of "values...
...to our "Constitution and Absolute Truth," urges Tom DeLay, House Majority Whip...
...If not, there's always belief in the market's Invisible Hand...
...Or what it means to remake the world entirely on market models (read Terence Ball on "Marketopia...
...They hope that fear of a Greater Power will secure bourgeois stability...
...He declared recently that the "war on poverty" is "more effective" thanks to Bill Clinton's 1996 compassionate welfare reform...
...Or a passage about stoning adulterers, umm...
...Perhaps Ashcroft's admirers, especially "creationists," should design our entire curriculum according to "values...
...Truth hurts, he told the Washington Post...
...Or to worry about marketization of universities (read John Palattella's article...
...You don't need to be religiously correct to worry about Bush's willingness "to expand market rights to pollute" (read Ken Conca in this issue of Dissent...
...But others believe—as did the late philosopher Leo Strauss, a neoconservative icon—that noble lies are needed to keep common people in place...
...It's not just politicians: there are intellectuals, too...
...Some conservatives think it reflects nature (that is, heaven) and thus incarnates values...
...In DeLay's view, Democrats are "socialists," the Environmental Protection Agency is "the Gestapo of the government," the state should not be separate from religion, but corporations need liberation from the state...
...What is discussed...
...An "A" gets you a job planning the national missile defense system...
...People hate the messenger...
...M.C...
...n Our political missionaries want more religion in the "public square...
...Physics 101: the sun stands still for Joshua...
Vol. 48 • July 2001 • No. 3
