( Read More... | 17338 bytes in body | Features )

by Ellen Willis

It often happens that the lunatic right, in its feckless way, gets closer to the heart of the matter than the political mainstream, and so it was with Jerry Falwell's notorious response to September 11. In suggesting that the World Trade Center massacre was God's judgment on an America that tolerates abortion, homosexuality and feminism, Falwell--along with Pat Robertson, who concurred--exposed himself to the public's averted eye. For most Americans, from George W. Bush on down, resist the idea that the attack was an act of cultural war, and fewer still are willing to admit its intimate connection with the culture war at home.

Opponents of the "clash of civilizations" thesis are half right. There is such a clash, but it is not between East and West. The struggle of democratic secularism, religious tolerance, individual freedom and feminism against authoritarian patriarchal religion, culture and morality is going on all over the world--including the Islamic world, where dissidents are regularly jailed, killed, exiled or merely intimidated and silenced. In Iran the mullahs still have police power, but reformist President Khatami has overwhelming popular support and young people are in open revolt against the Islamic regime. In Pakistan the urban middle classes worry that their society may be Talibanized. Even in the belly of the fundamentalist beast, the clandestine Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) has opposed both the Taliban regime and the scarcely less thuggish Northern Alliance.

At the same time, religious and cultural reactionaries have mobilized to attack secular modernity in liberal democracies from Israel to the post-Communist countries of Eastern Europe to the United States. Indeed, the culture war has been a centerpiece of American politics for thirty years or more, shaping our debates and our policies on everything from abortion, censorship and crime to race, education and social welfare. Nor, at this moment, does the government know whether foreign or domestic terrorists are responsible for the anthrax offensive. Yet we shrink from seeing the relationship between our own cultural conflicts and the logic of jihad. We are especially eager to absolve religion of any responsibility for the violence committed in its name: For that ubiquitous current cliché, "This has nothing to do with Islam," read "Antiabortion terrorism has nothing to do with Christianity."

( Read More... | 10202 bytes in body | Features )

by Wendell Berry

If you know even as little history as I do, it is hard not to doubt the efficacy of modern war as a solution to any problem except that of retribution—the “justice” of exchanging one damage for another.

Apologists for war will insist that war answers the problem of national self-defense. But the doubter, in reply, will ask to what extent the cost even of a successful war of national defense—in life, money, material, foods, health, and (inevitably) freedom—may amount to a national defeat. National defense through war always involves some degree of national defeat. This paradox has been with us from the very beginning of our republic. Militarization in defense of freedom reduces the freedom of the defenders. There is a fundamental inconsistency between war and freedom.

In a modern war, fought with modern weapons and on the modern scale, neither side can limit to “the enemy” the damage that it does. These wars damage the world. We know enough by now to know that you cannot damage a part of the world without damaging all of it. Modern war has not only made it impossible to kill “combatants” without killing “noncombatants,” it has made it impossible to damage your enemy without damaging yourself.

( Read More... | 18160 bytes in body )

by Molly Ivins

HAIL and farewell, o Enron! What a flameout. The Establishment media, sucking its collective thumb with unwonted solemnity, is treating us to meditations on two themes: ``How the mighty have fallen,'' and, ``Who would have thunk it?'' Pardon me while I snort, in lieu of ruder noises, and offer two themes of my own: ``What took so long?'' and, ``Anyone with an ounce of common sense.''

If you want to know what this story is about, pretend Bill Clinton is still president. Pretend Clinton's long-time, all-time biggest campaign contributor, a guy for whom Clinton has carried water for over the years, a guy with unparalleled ``access,'' a shaper of policy -- imagine that this guy's worldwide empire has tumbled into bankruptcy in just three months amid cascading reports of lies, monumental accounting errors, evasions, iffy financial statements, insider deals, a board of directors rife with conflicts of interest, top executives bailing out with millions while regular employees see their life savings shrink to nothing -- imagine all this back in the day of Bill Clinton.

We'd have four congressional investigations, three special prosecutors, two impeachment inquiries and a partridge in a pear tree by now. Republicans would be drumming their heels on the floor in full tantrum.

( Read More... | 2833 bytes in body )

Editorial

"We need honest, reasoned debate, and not fear-mongering. To those . . . who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of goodwill to remain silent in the face of evil."

THUS DOES the attorney general, John Ashcroft, characterize critics of his tactics in investigating terrorism and of the new authorities he has sought. Mr. Ashcroft's remarks were not off the cuff; he delivered them as part of his opening statement yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. They explain perfectly why many people have concerns about his leadership in this uncertain time. It is the attorney general's function, or should be, to ensure that a lively debate over policy is protected -- even during wartime. Mr. Ashcroft instead challenges the patriotism of those who dissent.

( Read More... | 2664 bytes in body )

by John Nichols

"When I think about who was the most effective person for me in that 1968 campaign in Wisconsin, I always come back to the name Midge Miller. She recognized the possibility."

Eugene McCarthy

Politics and poetry are infrequently associated - to the detriment of both endeavors.

Once upon a time, however, in a different and more hopeful America, politics and poetry had a brief acquaintance. And Midge Miller was central to the enterprise.

In the fall of 1967, Miller was a Madison mom with nine children, a job coordinating religious activities at the University of Wisconsin and a too-long list of community duties to juggle. Yet, she decided to take on another task: Deposing President Lyndon Johnson and ending the war in Vietnam. No small maneuver this, but Miller and a small band of anti-war Democrats determined to find a U.S. senator brave - or foolish - enough to take on his own president and party.

( Read More... | 4261 bytes in body )

by Norman Solomon

"If liberty means anything at all," George Orwell wrote, "it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

From all indications, the gatekeepers for big media in the United States don't want to hear what Noam Chomsky has to say -- and they'd prefer that we not hear him either.

Mainstream journalists in other nations often interview Chomsky. Based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he's a world-renowned analyst of propaganda and global politics. But the chances are slim that you'll ever find him on a large network here at home.

Chomsky is ill-suited to providing soundbites -- and that's not just a matter of style. A few snappy words are sufficient when they harmonize with the conventional wisdom in a matter of seconds. It takes longer to intelligibly present a very different assessment of political realities.

( Read More... | 4619 bytes in body )