ILF POST

By Ralph Keyes Calls for “community” are in the mom-and-apple-pie category, an applause line for Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush alike. Few question the need for a greater sense of community. At the same time, advances we cherish loosen ties that bind. Cars permit sprawl. Air conditioners make front porches unnecessary. [...]

By Nicholas Johnson President Bush’s authorization of NSA spying on American citizens raises issues more deserving of books than a column. Topping the list are potential political abuses that would make President Richard Nixon’s bungled burglary of the Democratic Party’s Watergate offices look like a kindergarten prank.
Other issues abound.

By Douglass Carmichael The narrowing at the top of the US government to a hermetically sealed small group of people whom we cannot get at needs to be explained.
Sovereignty (not subject to rule from above) has narrowed at the political top because real power has moved from politicians to corporations. That is, [...]

By Harlan Cleveland I was invited late last month to explain the history of The Marshall Plan in 15 minutes at the Secretary of State’s Open Forum, a monthly affair in the State Department’s Dean Acheson Auditorium. I devoted a few paragraphs to the memorable bipartisanship that characterized what I called “the most ambitious, [...]

By Mary Catherine Bateson We often forget — and make far too little use of — the desire of people to belong to a community and to enjoy the respect of their neighbors. Distorted as they often are by hypocrisy and competition, these are the wellsprings of human sociality and our best hope for [...]

By Linc Bloomfield Watching the tepid reception received by the president at his January 23 State of the Union address, I thought about Mr. Bush’s concern for his legacy. After all, on the same occasion forty years ago President Lyndon Johnson faced a skeptical Congress, the pluses in his domestic record no match for his [...]

By Ralph Keyes Twenty years ago a veteran editor assured me that the market for memoirs was so saturated that they soon wouldn’t be able to give them away. Since then thousands more memoirs have been published, including bestsellers such as Angela’s Ashes, This Boy’s Life, and The Liar’s Club. Why should that [...]