If only folks would turn off the TV and start attending PTA meetings, America’s future could be as bright as its civically engaged past. This diagnosis is taking shape in foundation-sponsored gatherings and among highbrow columnists. Privileged men and women–who spend most of their waking hours in their offices, on jet airplanes, and in front […]
Books, Arts and Culture
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Unsolved Mysteries: The Tocqueville Files
UNSOLVED MYSTERIESThe Tocqueville Files “What If Civic Life Didn’t Die?” by Michael Schudson“Unravelling From Above,” by Theda Skocpol“Couch-Potato Democracy?” by Richard M. Valelly Robert Putnam Responds
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Rooting the Home Team
All over America, owners are demanding extravagant subsidies and tax breaks for new stadiums. If communities want to keep their teams, there’s often a cheaper solution than giving way to these demands. Follow the example of Green Bay.
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Unsolved Mysteries: The Tocqueville Files II
UNSOLVED MYSTERIESThe Tocqueville Files II “Won’t You Be My Neighbor,” by William A. Galston“The Downside of Social Capital,” by Alejandro Portes and Patricia Landolt
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Unsolved Mysteries: The Tocqueville Files
Robert Putnam’s important and disturbing work on civic participation (“The Strange Disappearance of Civic America,” TAP, Winter 1996) has led him to conclude that television is the culprit behind civic decline. But lest we be too disturbed, we ought to consider carefully whether the data adequately measure participation and justify his conclusions and whether his […]
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The Aging Opportunity: America’s Elderly as a Civic Resource
The aging of American society is almost always seen as a problem, but the elderly may be our only growing natural resource — provided we create new ways to mobilize their civic energies.
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Unsolved Mysteries: The Tocqueville Files II
Bowling Alone” was published in January 1995. Seldom has a thesis moved so quickly from scholarly obscurity to conventional wisdom. By January 1996 the Washington Post was featuring a six-part series of front-page articles on the decline of trust, and Beltway pundits had learned the vocabulary of social capital. While the debate over the accuracy […]
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The Ideologically Invested
W hen President Clinton announced his economic plan in 1993, Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley had no doubt about what would happen. Clinton’s proposals, he predicted in a column in February 1993, would “cripple” the economy. While the plan was debated, this absolute certainty about its effects pervaded the Journal‘s discussion on both its […]
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How We Lost the Peace Dividend
After every previous war, we sent troops home and cut defense spending. The Col War is over, but real spending still runs 85 percent of the Cold War average.
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State of the Debate: Indelible Colors
A book by two political theorists argues that new, cultural definitions of race can be as insidious as the old, biological ones.
