Francis Fukuyama on how big business will pacify the clash of cultures: The world will move together as it builds the bodies through which we can all trust each other more. Who's sorry now? Michael Ignatieff apologizes for being wrong on Iraq. If only mainstream media acknowledged all the people who were right. A review of Beyond Preemption: Force and Legitimacy in a Changing World. George Scialabba reviews Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire by Morris Berman. Evolved for War: An interview with David Livingstone Smith, author of The Most Dangerous Animal. If you were a terrorist, how would you attack? Steven Levitt wants to know.
From TNR, Paul Berman on the death of an anarchist, the murder of a police chief, and the remaking of the European left. From The Economist, the conservative movement that for a generation has been the source of the Republican Party's strength is in the dumps; and is America turning left? Probably—but not in the way many foreigners (and some Americans) hope. The Progressive Center: Howard Dean helped spark a movement that has pushed the Democratic Party so far left that it is now squarely in the mainstream. An interview with Dinesh D’Souza, author of The Enemy at Home. The introduction to White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism by Kevin M. Kruse.
Paul Butler (GWU): Much Respect: Toward a Hip-Hop Theory of Punishment. From The Nation, a review of American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment by Sasha Abramsky; Punishment and Inequality in America by Bruce Western; Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration by Devah Pager; Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy by Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen; and The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America by Marie Gottschalk. Born equal? The US is no longer a land where people of humble origin become film stars and presidents.
