Special Report

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

When the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled on November 18 that gay and lesbian couples have a right to marriage under the state constitution, the predominant mood among liberals was not jubilation, as one might have expected, but a sense of foreboding that George W. Bush, the Republican Party, and the spin doctors of the […]

On May 17, gays and lesbians in Massachusetts will gain the right to marry, thanks to a 4-3 ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. In July, the Democratic presidential nominee, presumably John Kerry of Massachusetts, will triumphantly accept his party’s nomination, also in Massachusetts. Seemingly, it would be hard to contrive a better symbol […]

For a lesson in how the right uses language to shape political perceptions, consider the television ad that the archconservative Club for Growth ran during the Iowa caucuses. An announcer asks a middle-aged couple leaving a barbershop what they think of “Howard Dean’s plans to raise taxes on families by $1,900 a year.” The man […]

One of the most revealing passages in the late Paul Wellstone’s political memoir, The Conscience of a Liberal, is his criticism of the decision that he made during his first year in the Senate to hold a press conference on his opposition to the Gulf War within sight of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. “I wanted […]

Shortly before the 2000 presidential race started, Gertrude Himmelfarb, the aging Athena of neoconservatism, found herself struggling to express what she felt were the core values differences between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. What she came up with was that America had become “one nation, two cultures.” “One is religious, puritanical, family-centered, and somewhat […]

In his State of the Union address, President Bush told a rapt nation and the assembled government of the United States that our nation faces grave threats and must live up to its “great responsibilities,” which include defending the “pillars of our civilization”: our “families and schools and religious congregations.” What is more, he warned, […]