Editor's Page
Cohen, Mitchell
THIS ISSUE marks the fiftieth anniversary of our magazine. We plan a number of events in the coming year to celebrate, even if the political environment is uncongenial to elation. It prompts...
...Several authors in this issue address today's unsettling international scene...
...It prompts dissent instead...
...Look below...
...The Bush presidency is the unrepressed id of Reaganism...
...And the Republicans certainly have no democratic superego...
...Medicare reformed and an energy bill designed to the advantage of corporations and Mr...
...Unlike in the 1980s, there is no Democratic Party majority in Congress to be a restraining reality principle...
...policies, not syntax, are the problem...
...Think of Clinton's impeachment, the Florida vote in 2000, the Texas reapportionment, the California recall...
...disregard of civil liberties...
...Yes, some attacks on Mr...
...What could be worse for America's role in the world or for the image of democracy...
...MC...
...Connect the dots, and read Sean Wilentz's indictment of the GOP's "will to power" in this issue...
...Bush's political fortunes...
...n Every criticism of this administration is not "Bush-bashing...
...n As Dissent's founders might have said in 1954, this is just the beginning...
...It is a cheap shot, but only on the surface...
...Michael Walzer and his critics dispute vigorously the meaning of American empire...
...n What has the president done to persuade foes of the Iraq War—or, indeed, to enable a supporter of it like me—to give his administration a benefit of the doubt...
...Were I Iraqi I'd fret a lot that my country's needs may be sacrificed to American electoral politics...
...Our anniversary issue engages the present, but also provides a little perspective on Dissent's values and history...
...Jeff Faux writes elegantly on behalf of social democratic values in global economics...
...Paul Berman argues artfully about the left and the war...
...determined chipping at the wall separating religion and state...
...They resemble nothing so much as conservative vilification of Bill Clinton in the 1990s...
...Because it is rhetorical, this question is very, very scary...
...This president, who came into office after losing the popular vote, is a domestic unilateralist in war time...
...That should worry everyone, not least because his election campaign and right-wing pundits seek to make disagreement indistinguishable from sedition...
...n Some Republican congressmen recently proposed replacing Franklin D. Roosevelt's likeness on the dime with Ronald Reagan's...
...Our main event remains the ideas and arguments in our pages...
...The trouble with the Bush presidency is political not personal...
...Bush are puerile...
...We write for our times, against them, imagining better ones—insisting on the values of political democracy and social equality, on liberty with solidarity...
...n If you want to know why Dissent is "leftwing," look at what the most right-wing administration in recent memory calls its "compassionate conservatism": taxes cut to the benefit of those who can most afford them...
Vol. 51 • January 2004 • No. 1
