George Orwell’s great dystopian novel, 1984, was published in 1949. The U.K. and the rest of Europe were recovering from years of devastating war. And in eastern Europe, the genocidal dictatorship of the Nazis was being replaced by the rival totalitarian rule of Stalinist USSR. 1984 has become a template of subsequent visions of modern […]

Read more

If you hear somebody talking about the U.S. “jobs problem,” ask which one. Let’s talk about three: First, even as unemployment has inched down, the economy has created barely enough jobs to match population growth. Second, this enormous labor-market “slack” has stifled workers’ bargaining power and kept wages low. Third, even with a “tighter” labor […]

Read more

Affirmative action occupies a telling place in a nation painfully aware of its racial inequities yet painfully divided over how to solve them. Great numbers of Americans support the overarching goals of assuring equal access to educational opportunity and maintaining racial diversity in the country’s institutions of higher learning. At the same time, polls show […]

Read more

The United Kingdom is about to receive two of America’s top exports in far-right extremism. The English Defence League, a group that advocates for the rights of the “European race,” invited anti-Muslim activists Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer (pictured, left) to speak at its rally on June 29. Geller is perhaps best known for a […]

Read more

In the aftermath of the 2012 elections, some progressive commentators drew the mistaken conclusion that Democrats no longer needed white working-class Americans. High turnout and the Democratic tilt of youth, minorities, single women and upscale professionals, they argued, had created a new “coalition of the ascendant” that can win future presidential elections. In my new […]

Read more