THE fork of “liberalization” that is jabbing all of Communist Europe these days has two prongs: “Cultural Freedom” and “Political Liberty.” It is easy in an advanced capitalist country to forget sometimes how closely inter-related the two are. European Communist reformers, however, have never lost sight of this close connection–indeed, they sometimes disguise their political […]
Category: Pre 1970s
An Argument From Self-Interest
ATTACKING the immorality and illegality of the Vietnam war could conceivably shame people into stopping it but this is unlikely. Human beings are remarkably impervious to the calls of conscience when acting on self-interest. The most fruitful argument, then, is one that attempts to show that the American interest is not, in fact, advanced by […]
The War Economy
THE President’s Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (read Riots Commission) will probably recommend, unsurprisingly, that up to $20 billion be spent in the cities over the next five years. Skeptics have doubted that such large outlays will ever materialize. They reason that the health of the economy as a whole depends on such heavy Federal […]
Dylan Gets Religion
THE Dylan of John Wesley Harding appears touched with grace. The snarling pieties of Highway 61 Revisited, the lucid and patient degeneration in Blonde on Blonde, seem to have been blotted from his memory. Instead, Dylan reaches further into his past for a starting point–and only a starting-point. The new album is a unique and […]