Suchergebnisse

An essay discusses the idea of a free culture: one in which consumers feel slighted for not receiving culture for free on their computer. The author argues the results of piracy on the creators of the culture. Adapted from the source document.

Need it be said we live in gloomy times? The most optimistic among our commentariat talk of a jobless recovery: the
banks and Wall Street recuperate while more Americans face unemployment or watch their wages and benefits
stagnate. All this, of course, follows massive mortgage defaults and rising homelessness. Numerous journalists now
speak of a "lost generation" coming of age—young people unable to find jobs and sinking into psychic despair.
Depression 2.0, the Great Recession, or whatever you want to call it, has renewed a sense of what it means to get
the blues . Which brings us to Morris Dickstein's marvelous new book that explores "the crucial role that culture can play in times
of national trial."

Kevin Mattson reviews David Frum's Comeback: Conservatism that can Win Again , Donald T. Critchlow's The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History , and Jacob Heilbrunn's They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons .

American conservatism has always differed from the European conservatism of Edmund Burke. Bereft of rooted traditions, organic hierarchy, or state-based religion—all those things that built the European scaffolding for intellectual reaction—American conservatives have had to reconcile themselves to an alarmingly individualistic and populist society. That's not to say that America was born and will remain a liberal country, the way political scientists like Louis Hartz once confidently prognosticated during the 1950s. Rather, it means that to be conservative demands picking up on some not-so-native-born traditions (Catholicism) or turning populist in style—making for strange alliances and belief systems that don't necessarily hinge together too well.

It would seem that Dissenters and others on the left have a hard time getting over the cold war. Pieces about the cold war not only filled the Summer 2006 issue but have appeared before in the magazine's pages- including my own reconsideration of Arthur Schlesinger's The Vital Center (Winter 2005) and Jeffrey Isaac's brilliant defense of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (Summer 2002). There was also George Packer's fine collected set of essays (it included pieces by Dissent editors Paul Berman and Todd Gitlin) that evoked the memory of 1930s fascism and 1940s communism and made explicit linkages between cold war liberalism and the sort of liberalism that Packer hoped to recover.

Few of us will forget November 2004. I remember driving myself to the point of pneumonia, having spent the previous two months making "persuasion" calls to my fellow Ohioans during the evenings and doing weekend "lit drops" in tiny rural towns, consistently chased away from houses by snarling dogs. Then the results came in. Most liberals and leftists turned morose; some thought the country had lost its mind. Friends told me they planned to move to Canada (they never did). The journalist Marc Cooper argued that it became easy for a progressive in 2004 to "fancy" oneself "a member of a persecuted minority, bravely shielding the flickering flame of enlightenment from the increasing Christo-Republican darkness."

Comments on Joanne Barkan's "Cold War Liberals and the Birth of Dissent" (2006) It is argued that, drawing on Irving Howe's idealism, Barkan criticizes cold war liberals for selling out & becoming "realists." Both Howe & Barkan are criticized for the vagueness of their critiques of liberalism. It is contended that Barkan gives cold war liberals more power & influence than they really possessed. Further, she's accused of a utopianism that is not useful, when a middle ground might serve liberals better. Barkan counters by saying her complaint against the cold war liberals rests on instances when they compromised on civil rights, civil liberties, & foreign policy. Mattson fails to provide any evidence that cold war liberals assumed principled positions on these issues or had no choice but to cave. It is asserted that Mattson ignores specifics and simply claims that nothing more could be done. Thus the debate on 1950s liberal action has not been advanced. Six points made by Mattson are enumerated & responded to. It is concluded that wanting liberals to stand up for civil rights & civil liberties during the 1950s was a reasonable expectation, not part of some grand dream. D. Edelman