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
Politics
Posted inCivil Rights in America
The Future of Black Representation
Good riddance to racial gerrymandering. The Supreme Court’s ruling against race as the predominant factor in districting is good news for blacks and Democrats.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
State of the Debate: Quayle Hunting
Dan and Marilyn Quayle send–uh, try to send–a message on family values.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Cosmopolitics
G eorge Washington famously disdained faction. In his farewell address, he warned the nation against the “baneful effects of the spirit of party.” This dislike for partisanship may be the only connection between Washington and his namesake, the magazine George. Editor John F. Kennedy, Jr. describes George as post-partisan, an effort to engage more people […]
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Lingo Jingo
The story told by the English-only movement is nonsense from beginning to end. No language was ever less in need of official protection.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
How Low Can You Go? Made of Sterner Stuff
MADE OF STERNER STUFF The Lewinsky investigation has put me to reflecting about the many opportunities for rectitude that were missed in our past. Americans have now been told, all too late, about the illicit sexual behavior of presidents from Thomas Jefferson to JFK. Just think of how much better informed and more righteous the […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
The Power Elite Now
Power in America today looks far different from the picture that C. Wright Mills painted nearly half a century ago.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Old Party, New Energy
I n the mid-1970s, the founding fathers of the New Right almost walked away from the Republican Party. Sickened by Watergate and angry at what they perceived as the Republican Party’s moderation, Richard Viguerie, Howard Phillips, and Paul Weyrich strove to bring together the disparate conservative forces spawned by Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign into […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Party Decline
A lthough the Republic’s Founders dreaded the divisiveness of “faction,” political parties have proved essential to the promise of American democracy. Parties bridge the structural bias against government activism in the constitutional separation of powers and allow ordinary citizens who lack economic influence to aggregate political power. Hence, a strong party system is more crucial […]
