Yesterday’s New York Times carried an interesting column about citizenship tests. The most anxious nations—Britain, Germany, Canada and of course, the USA—have been revising their tests to raise the threshold for citizenship, making sure that prospective citizens get with the program before they are admitted to the club. The new tests are a fascinating Rorschach …
In my last essay, I quoted a line of Paul Goodman’s from forty years ago: “So we drift into fascism. But people do not recognize it as such, because it is the fascism of the majority.” I have been thinking about it ever since, with growing alarm. In one way, it seems insane to call …
Monday is my birthday. (And I’m honored to share it this year with Dr. Martin Luther King, may he rest in peace and may we live to see his dreams come true.) For me, a birthday is an occasion for relentless self-examination, which is how I seem to mark all milestones. I must be making …
The good news is that the New York Times broke the story about the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretaps of people in the United States, part of the National Security Agency’s “War on Civil Liberties”—er, I mean “War on Terror.” The bad news is they waited more than a year to do it, whether out of …
This just in: the Bush administration is an extremist organization. I have it straight from the godfather of conservatism. I’ve just gotten around to reading a really interesting piece by Tom Reiss in the October 24th New Yorker. “The First Conservative” profiles Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and political theorist Peter Viereck, who could arguably be credited …
Very often these days, I am struck by the absurdity of our political situation: people of goodwill find themselves debating questions that in a less anxious and more humane moment would be no-brainers. Take Senator John McCain’s Anti-Torture Amendment to the defense appropriations bill. It would outlaw torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of …
In my novel, Clarity, the eponymous new drug enables users to see through imposed realities and false values. Under its influence, a conservative member of Congress awakens to the actual impact of President Bush’s budget priorities and speaks his mind publicly. (There’s a scene with the Cheney family too, but unfortunately it hasn’t come true…yet.) …
Earlier this week I heard Bruce Springsteen interviewed on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” The occasion was the release of the 30th anniversary edition of his breakthrough album, “Born to Run.” I’ve always liked Bruce, despite some friends’ reservations about his evident patriotism and his particular flavor of masculine assertion (I guess I like them too). But …
For the last week, every spare moment I’ve had my nose stuck in book friends urged on me when I was in Seattle last month: the sci-fi novel Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. It is a rather wonderful evocation of an alternate reality in which children are brilliantly and ruthlessly trained to serve as …
Tuesday mornings I try to go to the local farmers’ market. Almost all the vendors are Asian or Latino, so there are lots of interesting herbs and vegetables to try along with the onions and apples. One vendor offers an ever-changing array of tree fruit from his farm in the San Joaquin Valley. He is …