Editor's Page
Cohen, Mitchell
THE MAN who first flung a word do abuse at an enemy instead of a spear was the founder of civilization." Sigmund Freud once quoted this adage with approval, and its (apocryphal) point is plain...
...n Perhaps they are inspired by the declaration made in 1993 by Irving Kristol, neoconservative doyen: "There is no `after the cold war' for me...
...There is also a sorry history of demonizing and misrepresenting foes within the left (as every "renegade social democrat" knows...
...Sigmund Freud once quoted this adage with approval, and its (apocryphal) point is plain enough...
...Michael Kazin examines the role of religion in politics...
...Later came the "real cold war" over Monica Lewinsky...
...We are far less prepared for this cold war," he added, "far more vulnerable to our enemy . . . [I]t is a conflict I shall be passing on to my children and grandchildren...
...n Continue to date...
...Well, what else would you call a thirty-seven year veteran of the Marines who received a bronze star and two purple hearts...
...The Republican leadership, the Christian right, and neoconservative ideologues sound as if democracy were little more than a continuation of war by other means...
...This issue of Dissent presents a different type of partisanship, one of democratic argument and reflections about priorities in disquieting times...
...n No verbal vice seems too extreme when the American right assails critics...
...Liberalism had corrupted "sector after sector" of society, and so "now that the other 'Cold War' had ended, "the real cold war" could begin...
...Harold Meyerson considers the state of the Republicans...
...Ex-Senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in Vietnam, was branded unpatriotic because he disagreed with the president...
...Follow a thread from McCarthyism through Richard Nixon's use of racial innuendo to pursue his "Southern Strategy" (conservatives don't complain about this legacy of the 1960s), and on to demonizing liberals in the Reagan era...
...Senator John Kerry's military record was smeared in the 2004 campaign...
...n That's why we need to fret about the state of contemporary American public culture...
...Its spears are showing...
...Healthy democracy demands more: partisanship in good faith—rather than partisanship as a surrogate for spears...
...Now Representative Jack Murtha is declared a "coward" because he changed position on Iraq...
...Today, American conservatives deserve special, dishonorable mention...
...But its insufficiency as a maxim for democratic civilization is also evident...
...n Well, he did, but our rightwingers were very prepared...
...Rhetorical venom is a vintage phenomenon in the country's politics back to attacks on "Godless" Thomas Jefferson...
...Jeff Faux asks how the Democrats can alter the national agenda...
...M.C...
...Iris Young scrutinizes the Hurricane Katrina debate...
...Lucky for him that his wife didn't work for the CIA...
Vol. 53 • January 2006 • No. 1
