Editor's Page
Walzer, Michael
THE WORLD IS a grim place these days, but here at home, in the months since November, our spirits have lifted a bit, and in this issue of Dissent we are able to publish a few hopeful articles....
...War is sometimes necessary and sometimes, when would-be conquerors are defeated or massacres stopped, it is beneficial...
...The means of political struggle— agitation, organization, education, demonstration—are closely connected to the practice of democracy...
...The contributions are very strong, the argument heated...
...we won't look away from a world where mass murder is still possible...
...And Nelson Lichtenstein and Jim McNeill, analyzing the state of the unions, can write about (what we call on the front cover) "labor's agenda"—as if there might really be an agenda and not just a wish list...
...We won't let go of Rwanda, or of Darfur...
...How all this will play out over the next eighteen months is uncertain, but things are possible now that we hardly dreamed of two years ago...
...n There is a Dissent series in the making on intellectual and academic life around the globe...
...Again and again we learn what we already know: that war, contra Clausewitz, is not best understood as politics by other means—because the "other means" make a radical difference...
...Benjamin Ross expresses some skepticism, which our readers will expect...
...In the next Dissent, we will carry our first article in years on national health insurance...
...n We feature here a symposium on democratization and the lessons of Iraq...
...Studying the 2006 voting statistics, Ruy Teixeira manages to look forward to 2008...
...It's not that we have stopped worrying, but we worry now with a new sense of purpose...
...they are, so to speak, practice for the practice...
...Christine Stansell writes about it again in this issue, focusing on its aftermath and on all the problems of denial, justice, and the necessary coexistence of victims and perpetrators...
...We invite more pieces of this sort— Teaching Heidegger in Haiti...
...n Over the years, Dissent has published six articles on the Rwandan genocide...
...But its benefits are largely negative...
...Positive benefits, such as the establishment of liberal, pluralist, and democratic regimes, require political and ideological struggle before, during, and after wars and, even better, instead of wars...
...M.W...
...War has no similar connection...
...Carlos Fraenkel joins him with a report on his experience teaching a course on Platonism at al-Quds University in East (Palestinian) Jerusalem...
...The lesson that I would stress is more a matter of reiteration than discovery...
...Daniel A. Bell started it with his "Teaching Political Theory in Beijing" a few issues back and continues here with a piece on Marx and Confucius...
Vol. 54 • April 2007 • No. 2
