Social Justice Magazine
In the last month or so, there has been a somewhat low-key launch of an independent presidential campaign that is distinguished from previous efforts by the fact that it is not starting with a candidate like Ross Perot or Ralph Nader. Rather, Americans Elect starts with the premise that millions of Americans are deeply disillusioned with our current parties and candidates.It proposes to define … [Read more...]
One of the most striking features of our current global economic morass is that many Third World economies are weathering the crisis rather well, while the supposed leaders of the world economy (the United States, the European Union, the Japanese) are in deep trouble that looks to get deeper. This is a complete reversal of the situation in the 1980s, when many Third World countries faced a major … [Read more...]
The American right wing operates on the basis of pernicious myths about the market and capitalism: that a free market solves all problems better than government, that our present economic system exemplifies the best of free enterprise, and that capitalism is synonymous with democracy. Yet we know that unregulated markets lead inexorably to monopoly, and cannot provide such goods as health care … [Read more...]
With the successful US mission to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden, attention has justifiably turned again to whether Pakistan is playing a double game, collaborating with our forces while simultaneously aiding the Taliban and Al Qaeda. In reality, we cannot say that Pakistan is two-faced: that would imply a degree of unity that does not square with what we know about that country. Pakistan has … [Read more...]
A few things are clear in the wake of the stunning news of the operation that penetrated Osama bin-Laden’s hideout outside Islamabad, Pakistan, and killed him in the early hours of May 2.The first, of course, is the ruthless skill with which the Special Forces carried out a mission that had been meticulously prepared by intelligence agencies. This is a business where we mostly learn about … [Read more...]
President Obama has taken severe criticism from all sides for his response to the crisis in Libya. Neoconservatives and Cold War liberals both demand a more forceful intervention to defend American interests and protect Libyan civilians. Paleoconservatives and left liberals are both critical of any involvement in that country, on grounds that we are already fighting two wars on questionable … [Read more...]
Stephen L. Carter, The Violence of Peace: America’s Wars in the Age of Obama (New York: Beast Books, 2011). Having run for President as a candidate bitterly critical of the Bush administration’s Iraq War and the so-called “War on Terror”, Barack Obama as President has largely affirmed those policies, as well as escalating our war in Afghanistan. Many of his most fervent supporters are … [Read more...]
Libya and the United States: What Happens When Sound Bites Don’t Work? One of the fascinating back stories of the U.S. response to the Libyan crisis is how it’s exposed fundamental splits on both Right and Left in this country.Stereotypically, we expect conservatives to favor war and liberals to oppose it, but we’ve known at least since Vietnam how simplistic that is. In the post-Cold … [Read more...]
Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010).My fellow political scientists frequently eschew actual involvement in policy debates and political conflict, preferring, like Chauncey Gardiner in Jerzy Kosinsky’s Being There, to watch. But Hacker and Pierson, … [Read more...]
Deficit Commission - Bowles Simpson Proposal Won't Satisfy Anyone The co-chairs of the President’s Deficit Commission, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, have been greeted by a predictable chorus of boos from both ends of the political spectrum as they set forth their recommendations for controlling the deficit. They gore the sacred oxen of both sides. For example, they propose to extend the … [Read more...]
Republicans Take Back the Seats They LostAfter two straight electoral victories, the Democrats took a major hit on November 2. It’s important for Democrats to keep in perspective that it was bad, but could have been worse. And Republicans should (but probably won’t) remember that an election victory doesn’t mean blanket endorsement of their most sweeping demands. The next two years … [Read more...]
As President Obama moves cautiously to wind down the war in Iraq, he will probably leave an ambiguous muddle in a country that he said we never should have attacked. Meanwhile, he has upped the ante in Afghanistan, where he had accused George Bush of failing to follow through on a conflict that was justified by the attacks of 9/11.However, while upping the ante with thousands of new troops, … [Read more...]