Dreams and Realities
The American Dream and the Public Schools By Jennifer Hochschild and Nathan Scovronick, Oxford University Press, 301pages, $35.00 Beneath all the controversies that roil America’s public schools — bilingual education, school choice, inclusion of children with disabilities, alternative approaches to instruction, and so on — is there one fundamental conflict and one master…
Throwing Away the Rules
Corporate America’s ideological assault on government regulation has undermined middle America’s understanding of why these rules exist in the first place. It is true that some regulations have lived past their prime, protecting monopolies and stifling innovation. But the free-market ideologues of our era were not content to adjust those regulations to accommodate new economic…
Losing Ground
During the 2000 presidential TV debates, George W. Bush relentlessly repeated the tired Republican mantra that government, especially the federal government, is the enemy of American workers. As president, he’s turned that rhetoric into reality. Actually, Bush is as much a big-government guy as was Lyndon Johnson or FDR. But in his case, Bush has…
Schools of Hard Knocks
The fights over education — school vouchers, the No Child Left Behind Act, affirmative action, and access to higher education — resonate deeply with people because they are literally fights over the American dream. Americans used to be able to move up economically with a high-school degree and a blue-collar, unionized job, and their kids…
Future Retirees at Risk
Retirement security for middle-class Americans is at risk. First, the push to privatize Social Security has diverted attention from solving the program’s financing problems. Second, unchecked reliance on 401(k) plans has made employer-provided pensions less reliable. Third, the president’s “ownership society” initiative has led to policy proposals that undermine pension coverage and splinter the health-care…
Don’t Mourn, Mobilize
It’s getting harder and harder to be middle class. As a result of the Bush administration’s relentless tax-cutting agenda — designed to limit the ability of government to deliver services — the lives of middle-class Americans are becoming more difficult and less secure, in areas from health care to pensions to public schools. But, in…
The Great Tax Shift
The Bush administration claims that the guiding principle for its fiscal policy has been “lower income taxes for all, with the greatest help for those most in need,” as the White House Web site puts it. The reality is starkly different. The tax cuts enacted during George W. Bush’s presidency shift the burden of taxation…
Middle Class and Broke
Families with children are under assault. The assault is quiet, attracting few headlines, no congressional investigations, no knowing conversations at the office or at parties. The assault is stealthy, but the effects are profound. This year, more families with children will file for bankruptcy than divorce. Motherhood is now the single best predictor that a…
The Constitution in Play
Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty By Randy E. Barnett, Princeton University Press, 357 pages, $32.50 Except for conservative activists and a few academics, virtually no one pays attention to right-wing legal theories. But if, as promised, George W. Bush in a second term hands the federal judiciary over to acolytes…
The Literary Life: The Honorable Menace
In 1954, James T. Farrell published a collection of essays called Reflections at Fifty. It is long since out of print, like most of his novels and, so far as I can tell, all of his nonfiction volumes. Digging it out now, Reflections is a reminder of what the author of Studs Lonigan was like…
Father Figured
George Herbert Walker Bush (Penguin Lives Series) By Tom Wicker, Lipper/Viking, 228 pages, $19.95 Who would have thought just a few years ago that George Herbert Walker Bush would, to put it a bit cruelly, be relevant again? When he left office in January 1993, ceding the White House to a new party,…
American Families at Risk
Since the Great Depression, there has been a strong national political consensus supporting policies that help middle-class families cope with the multiple risks in our market economy. These include the risks of illness, destitution in old age, hazards from defective products, polluted natural resources, industrial accidents, corporate frauds, high unemployment, and other assaults largely beyond…
Radcon 3
In my view, being a liberal is something to be proud of. Yet for more than 20 years, liberals have been on the defensive and conservatives ascendant. Radical conservatives — “radcons,” I call them — are taking over the public agenda. Radcons are revolutionaries. For them, ends justify means. They’ll do whatever it takes to…
John on the Spot
They say that John Kerry has the entire Democratic establishment, and even some outliers, in his corner. “I personally have never seen the Democratic Party more united,” says one party strategist. “As in ever.” Swearing that the intraparty squabbling of the last decade is over, allegiance to the candidate has come from all corners. But…
Freedom Fraud
By the fall of 2003, the main argument by which the Iraq War was sold to the public — that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that it was likely to give to terrorists — was looking pretty threadbare. Tacking with the wind, George W. Bush took advantage of the 20th anniversary of the National…
Meanwhile, in Africa …
An interesting case study in the Bush administration’s penchant for forging bilateral alliances that are enabling some truly wretched regimes is Eritrea, a small Horn of Africa nation strategically located on the Red Sea, where some on the right would like to establish U.S. air and naval bases. Eritrea is a truly remarkable country: There’s…
Realistpolitik
John Mearsheimer, one of the pre-eminent representatives of the realist school of international relations, voted for George W. Bush in 2000. But not this time. Come November, he’s not only voting for John Kerry but “will do so with enthusiasm.” As a realist, the University of Chicago political scientist liked Bush’s anti-nation-building rhetoric during the…
The Rice Capades
Between May and July 2001, the National Security Agency intercepted more than 30 private communications suggesting an imminent terrorist attack. In June, U.S. intelligence discovered that leading al-Qaeda operatives were vanishing from sight, possibly in preparation for a strike. By August, the CIA was reporting that Khalid al-Mindhar, Nawaf al-Hazmi, and other associates of Osama…
Bankers Versus Base
There may come a day, in January 2005, when the Democrats will come back to power. Can we perhaps divert ourselves from the campaign long enough to ask, what then? The Democrats have a problem. Their base wants jobs and security. Their financial leadership wants a return to the Clinton formula of deficit reduction, leaving…
Step Back
How long is the United States going to be in Iraq? And in whose hands and what shape are we going to leave it? Recent events ought to force us all to re-examine these questions no matter whether we opposed or supported the original invasion. As this magazine goes to press (April 12), U.S. forces…
