You may not have heard of Antonio Villaraigosa, but in about a month he is likely to be on the cover of Time and Newsweek. Villaraigosa is the front-runner to become the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles in the June 5 election. Almost more important, his likely win is the fruit of a remarkable […]
Robert Kuttner
Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. His latest book is Notes for Next Time: Surviving Tyranny, Redeeming America. Follow Bob at his site, robertkuttner.com, and on Twitter.
Posted inFeatures
Globalization and Its Critics
What is Tom Daschle up to? “In this divided government,” he declared upon becoming Senate majority leader, “we are required to find common ground and seek meaningful bipartisanship.” He told the press he would not seek repeal of even the most ill considered portions of President Bush’s tax cut. In an op-ed in The New […]
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Comment: After Triumphalism
What a wonderful world it seemed in the 1990s. TheUnited States had not only won the Cold War; it had demonstrated the economic,political, and moral superiority of its own system, the free market. Those abroadwho had long resented U.S. global policies were finally revealed to beself-defeating nationalists or superannuated Marxists. Even the Latin Americanswere scrambling […]
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Of Our Time: Globalism Bites Back
T he Asian financial crisis is a practical rebuttal to the naive internationalism that is America’s foreign economic policy. Naive globalism includes these precepts: The freest possible movement of goods and services maximizes economic efficiency, hence human well-being. If free competition is good nationally, it is even better globally. With a few basic ground rules, […]
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US Needs New Thinking On Global Trade
The administration is trying to move a global trade agenda that was blocked two years ago in Seattle by protesters in the streets and skepticism in the Third World. This time, the World Trade Organization talks have been moved to the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, a despotic oil emirate where protesters, foreign and domestic, […]
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Of Our Time: The Age of Trespass
[T]he system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, 1944 [A] government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take everything you have. […]
Posted inEconomic Policy
Of Our Time: Rules That Liberate
R ecently, I participated in a new television program called Debates, Debates, in which two teams have an hour to argue an issue of the day. The proposition under debate that day was whether trade sanctions should ever be used to advance human rights. For the opposition, the team captain was Eugene Rotberg, former vice […]
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Of Our Time: Rescuing Democracy From “Speech”
T he several pillars of political democracy each seem inviolable first principles, but they exist in necessary tension with one another. Viewing any one principle in isolation, we too easily conclude that it is the indispensable element-the trump. For example, democracy entails both liberty and equality. But neither ideal can be taken to its logical […]
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Comment: After Ideology
In late March, leaders of European Union member nations agreed at their annual summit meeting, in Lisbon, on a program of sweeping economic liberalization aimed at bringing Europe into the Internet age. For the most part, the talk was of sweeping away the remnants of state regulation and welcoming the bracing winds of private enterprise. […]
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Comment: Should Gore Do a Humphrey?
Does Al Gore need his own China policy? What do Republican kingmakers do if George W. bombs big-time?
