Nation Topics - The Left | The Nation

The article comments on current events and world politics. Socialist Party leader Michelle Bachelet, Chile's first woman president, is not expected to bring economic reform to the country. A quote from Al Gore focused on warrantless wiretapping in the United States. The Maryland legislature passed a bill that requires Wal-Mart to provide health insurance to their employees who have relied on Medicaid programs. Two economic studies, by Scott Wallsten of the Brookings Institution, and economist Joseph Stiglitz with Linda Bilmes of Harvard, indicate the costs of the Iraq War will be more than $1 trillion. An essay contest sponsored by "Nation" is mentioned.

Presents an argument made by United States Senator George McGovern that patriotism and the values of marriage, family, and national security are nonpartisan. When I entered the U.S. Senate in 1963, America was involved in the jungles of Vietnam. I am as proud of my effort to stop the slaughter in Vietnam as I am of my participation in World War II. In both cases, I was guided by patriotism and love of my country. My maiden speech in the Senate was aimed at our government's policy of isolating and boycotting Cuba. No such policy was pursued toward the Communist giants--Russia and China. Liberals such as I are accused not only of being weak on defense but also weak on marriage and the family, the work ethic and reverence for religious faith. I have never known a political leader in either party who was disloyal to America, or who scoffed at marriage and the family, or who disrespected God and religious faith. Republicans and Democrats alike are pro-American, pro-freedom, pro-life, pro-family and pro-God Almighty.

Presents a letter to the editor in response to the article, "The Redistricting Wars," by Sasha Abramsky, which appeared in the December 29, 2003 issue of the magazine.

The recall of California Governor Gray Davis, scheduled for a vote October 7, calls to mind Karl Marx's statement about history repeating itself, "the first time as tragedy, and the second as farce." But in the case of the California recall, it's tragedy, farce and a lot more all rolled into a single political event that's as portentous as it is bizarre. The backers of the recall, fueled by nearly $2 million from Representative Darrell Issa, a conservative, deep-pockets Southern California Congressman who hoped to succeed Davis, set in motion a process under which voters will decide on two questions: whether or not to recall Davis and, if a majority favors the recall, who should succeed him. The entry into the race of actor-muscleman Arnold Schwarzenegger early in August was a stunner that entirely changed the dynamics of the election. There's been a lot of talk about the recall as a Republican coup. While there's no evidence of a GOP coup, the miasma of political ill will, and particularly the extremes of GOP partisanship and the personal and ideological animosities that come with it, are part of California's political atmosphere. Davis, Democratic governor of the nation's largest and perhaps most liberal state, was a harsh critic of the Bush Administration--particularly for its failure to help check wholesale electricity and gas prices during the crisis of 2000-01. California has been a target of Administration sniping ever since. As the nation increasingly feels the same demographic shifts now evident in California, as it perceives itself under greater pressure from federal deficits, reductions in public services and tax cuts for the wealthy further hollow out the middle class, the stresses that produced the Davis recall will inevitably find their outlets.

Essays by Jack Newfield, which will appear in the book 'American Rebels,' attempt to locate and define a coherent American tradition reconciling authentic patriotism with original artistic creation, unpopular opinion and moral principles that do not change with the winds. The subjects of the essays include rebels in politics, education, journalism, religion, literature, film, sports, music, law, popular culture and social struggle. Newfield was able to convince himself that persons such as Walt Whitman, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad All, Norman Mailer, Miles Davis, George McGovern, Willie Mays, Herman Melville, Bessie Smith, Sandy Koufax, Cesar Chavez, Janis Joplin, Larry Bird, Lenny Bruce, Sam Cooke, and Fiorello LaGuardia represented an alternative conception of the country, that they were just as legitimate and American as the burglars of the flag, whom he loathed: Nixon, Kissinger, George Wallace, Senator Bilbo, Henry Ford, John D. and Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Frick, General Custer, Richard Helms, Antonin Scalia, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy and Spiro Agnew. Newfield claims America is a democracy that can be changed for the better by books and the free flow of information.

William Kristol's April 7, 2003 editorial in 'The Weekly Standard' denouncing critics of the war on Iraq as anti-American is startlingly reminiscent of the menacing directives issued for decades by the Soviet Communist Party's Department of Ideology. Any literate person of Kristol's generation surely remembers the repressive charges of anti-Sovietism leveled by the Kremlin against domestic dissidents, including the great pro-democracy dissident Andrei Sakharov. Now Kristol lays down the line that all critics of the White House's war are guilty of holding anti-American opinions. No doubt Kristol, with his censorious, antidemocratic instincts, would have risen high in the apparat of the old Soviet Communist Party. But there may be a larger, more ominous parallel here: Once upon a time, the Kremlin also used force to try to remake the world in its own image.

Presents information concerning U.S. politics and government as of September 2, 2002. Connection between the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush and politicians in Venezuela who became involved in a coup there in April 2002; Case of Julius Scales, the only American imprisoned for being a member of the Communist Party; Topic of freedom to dissent in the U.S.

The article focuses on several events. The Irondale Ensemble Project, winner of the Otto Award for Political Theater, presents playwright Bertolt Brecht's In the Jungle of the City, April 25-May 26, 2001 in New York City. Button and bumper sticker makers Kate Donnelly and Clay Colt will receive a Peace Award at dinner; the program will include a silent auction of movement memorabilia, Friday, June 1, 2001, in New York City. Hundred of activists will discuss and debate the anti-globalization movement, labor's fight today, Palestinian solidarity, abortion rights, Marxist theory and much more on June 14-17, 2001 in Chicago, Illinois.

Presents several letters to the editor referencing articles and topics discussed in previous issues. Views race relations in the U.S.; Presents information on African American militant organizations; Comments on communism.

Politician Ignazio Silone was one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1921. In 1927-the year of the defeat of the Left Opposition by Stalin-he returned from Moscow to Italy as a senior clandestine organizer for the PCI. From at least 1919, when he was a Socialist Party militant, until a definite cutoff date in 1930, Silone was an industrious and willing stool pigeon for the authorities, and consciously sent many Socialist and Communist workers to their death or to vile treatment and incarceration. In the post-1945 period, he was conspicuous among the anti-Communist ex-Communists who wrote for cultural magazines within the orbit of the CIA and its subsidized professorate. He also contributed an essay to the celebrated Arthur Koestler/ Richard Crossman anthology of "second thoughts."