oYou know what gets in the way of progress? Dogma. When people are wedded to ideologies, society atrophies and ideas become non-existent. Voltaire once said, “it is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.” Truer words have rarely been spoken; it’s as though America has morphed into a society of Jim Jones cultists. Personalities the Kool-Aid and politics the cyanide; we keep swallowing poison only to complain of migraines after we get bludgeoned by policies our political idols implement once they get to DC. The sheer masochism of it all would be comical if our fixation did not…

The welfare state is of course the great postwar achievement of social democracy, even though in continental Europe it knows longer and older traditions. But it seems to me important to defend it, or better still, to give social democracy and the so-called Third Way, a chance to defend it, not because such a defense has any prospects of succeeding, but rather very precisely because from the Marxian perspective it is bound to fail. We must support social democracy because its inevitable failure constitutes the basic lesson, the fundamental pedagogy, of a genuine Left… The lesson is this, and it…

1Seven Children Among Slain as Attacks Target Residential BuildingsJason Ditz Posted onAugust 25, 2017CategoriesNewsTagsSaudi Arabia, Yemen For the second time this week, Saudi warplanes have conducted airstrikes against the Yemeni capital city of Sanaa, hitting residential buildings and killing a substantial number of civilians. At least 16 civilians were killed in today’s strikes, against targets in the city’s south, with at least seven children among the slain. The attacks mostly hit a single building, killing everyone within. The casualties grew substantially, however, when an adjoining building also collapsed. Some civilians had escaped that building before it crumbled, but many were buried in the wreckage, so…

Decades ago, a debate over what kind of nation America is roiled the conservative movement. Neocons claimed America was an “ideological nation” a “creedal nation,” dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal.” Expropriating the biblical mandate, “Go forth and teach all nations!” they divinized democracy and made the conversion of mankind to the democratic faith their mission here on earth. With his global crusade for democracy, George W. Bush bought into all this. Result: Ashes in our mouths and a series of foreign policy disasters, beginning with Afghanistan and Iraq. Behind the Trumpian slogan “America First” lay…

As we mark the 50th anniversary of the longest military occupation in modern history, some are celebrating. It is fully appropriate that these celebrations will include a joint session of the US Congress and the Israeli Knesset, held via video link. For Israel’s rule over East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights is only made possible by the constant support it has obtained since June 1967 from successive US administrations. This is therefore not solely an Israeli occupation: Since the very beginning, it has in fact been a joint undertaking, an Israeli-American condominium, if you…