Innehållsförteckning för January 25-February 1, 2016 från The Nation

@thenation.com Nader Haters and Lovers In “Nader Then and Now” [Dec. 21/28, 2015], Mark Green extols Ralph Nader’s virtues as though he were a demigod. I consider him a Don Quixote who led a simple bunch of Sancho Panzas to waste their votes in Florida in 2000. That, consequently, gave the state’s electoral votes to George W. Bush and led to the Iraq War and the resulting chaos we face today. Therefore, whatever Nader may (or may not) have accomplished before or since, I consider him a boob. BILL WISEMAN QUINCY, ILL. Your article about Ralph Nader was much appreciated. I have never, for one moment, regretted voting for him. I cherish the memory that, for the first and last time since John Kennedy, I was able to vote for…

EDITORIAL On January 11, the Supreme Court will hear argument on Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a full-bore attack on public-sector unions. The lead Friedrichs plaintiffs, a group of fiercely anti-union California public-school teachers, seek to reverse Abood v. Detroit Board of Education (1977) on First Amendment grounds. Abood has provided the bedrock constitutional analysis and recommended administrative structure for public-sector unionism for nearly 40 years. Its reversal would trigger an earthquake in American labor relations. The legal foundations of thousands of public-sector bargaining agreements, covering millions of workers providing all manner of public services, will disappear. The whole of American public employment, at all levels of government, will become a “right to work” (i.e., right not to pay for service) killing field for unions. The Court has revisited Abood…

The occupiers of Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge are demanding that the federal government abandon one of the most precious spaces in America. The Bundy boys want the refuge “shut down forever,” proposing that wildlife refuges be relinquished to ranchers and miners for exploitation of the land. Condemnations of federal land management have long been voiced not just by the extreme right, but by conservative politicians and media outlets that object both to land-management policies and to serious protection of wetlands and wildlife. They are attacking not merely current practices, but a century of federal policy rooted in what was once a Republican-led commitment to conservation. “Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt to protect the vast populations of waterbirds that were being decimated by…

In our issue for June 5, 1982, Christopher Hitchens reviewed Years of Upheaval, Henry Kissinger’s memoir of the second Nixon term. Violating his vow not to read another book by Kissinger “until the publication of his prison letters,” Hitchens found evidence in it of an “appalling moral deafness.” “This book is a dishonest account of a period in which America’s internal politics were debauched,” Hitchens wrote, “and its foreign policy became synonymous with dictatorship and aggression. Reading it really made me feel sick. There’s a lot of talk these days, much of it flatulent, about various ‘hangovers’ of the 1960s. There are a lot of things about the 1960s that I don’t miss. But, to judge by the reception accorded this volume, one thing we seem to have lost is…

In her syndicated newspaper column on January 6, 1941, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote: “America is not a pile of goods, more luxury, more comforts, a better telephone system, a greater number of cars. America is a dream of greater justice and opportunity for the average man and, if we can not obtain it, all our other achievements amount to nothing.” That afternoon, in his annual State of the Union address, President Franklin Roosevelt spoke powerfully about the fundamental values at the heart of American democracy, which he portrayed as a potent antidote to the tyranny then taking over Europe. He envisioned a world with “four essential human freedoms” at its core: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. And he proclaimed, hopefully, that…

Dear Liza, Is it morally objectionable to steal food to feed yourself, and only from chain businesses? —Hungry but Principled Dear Hungry, There’s no moral reason to refrain from stealing food from chain stores, especially if you live in one of the 14 percent of American households struggling to afford food. Food is a necessity. Stop & Shop can afford to help. In 1970s Italy, shoplifting was rampant as part of a strategy called “autoreduction.” Consumers and workers sought to attack the capitalist system and improve their own living conditions in one go—consumers through theft, and workers through slowdowns or sabotage. In the context of a larger social movement called “autonomism,” autoreduction offered immediate redistribution, and forced governments and capitalists into reforms that improved people’s lives (reducing electricity prices, for…

While Doug Henwood’s My Turn doesn’t concern itself with “the extraordinary virulence of the misogyny” aimed at Hillary, many will recall the range of invective aimed at her during the 2008 election: She was “haggard” and “emotional,” a “bitch” and “hysterical.” The 2016 campaign cycle is shaping up to be no different. “I know where she went. It’s disgusting. I don’t want to talk about it.” —Donald Trump, on Hillary Clinton’s bathroom break during a presidential debate “I think what [Trump is] doing may be smart, because it baits Hillary to make her look like a wimp… a whiny, weak female.” —Fox News host Andrea Tantaros, on Trump’s bathroom comment “She’s great at being the victim. You know this will enhance her victimology status.” —Jeb Bush, in response to Trump’s…

At first glance, you’d probably guess that I would proudly don a “Feel the Bern” T-shirt and make a generous donation to the democratic socialist firing up the Democratic Party. Born to leftists themselves born to leftists, I am what is known in some circles as a “red-diaper baby.” My immigrant Jewish grandparents met in New York City, at a meeting of the Young People’s Socialist League on the Lower East Side, and I grew up more familiar with the words to labor anthems than to those of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” My mother was an activist in the civil-rights movement who later engaged with feminism, antiwar activism, and the vast panoply of progressive issues that ebbed and flowed through our national politics over the past half-century. In other words, I…

WHEN BILL DE BLASIO EMERGED FROM THE City Hall subway station a few minutes before his inauguration two Januarys ago, he wore a smile and a crisp suit. On his right were his wife, son, and daughter. On his back were two narratives destined to define his first 24 months in office. One was “A Tale of Two Cities,” de Blasio’s campaign critique of an increasingly unequal New York, characterized by rising rents, swelling homeless shelters, and racially skewed policing. The other was the notion that as a liberal mayor with little executive experience, de Blasio was doomed to mismanage the city into a return of “the bad old days.” He’d won the 2013 race because of the former and despite the latter; the two narratives represented the lenses through…

15.8% Increase in the average hourly wage in non– “right to work” states compared with “right to work” states $1,501 Additional amount that a typical middle-class household, union or not, would earn per year if unionization rates increased by 10 percent 2M How many fewer Americans would have health insurance if all states were “right to work” 3.8M How many fewer Americans would have pensions if all states were “right to work” “The national teachers’ union.” Chris Christie, New Jersey governor and Republican presidential candidate, when asked at a recent GOP debate who “deserves a punch in the face.”…

COMMENT Burns, Oregon Stretching across 188,000 acres of scrubland in southeastern Oregon, the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is home to more than 320 bird species and, as of press time, an armed group of self-styled militiamen. The men took over the refuge’s headquarters on January 2 to protest the arrest of two local ranchers and the tyranny of the federal government. An Arizona cattleman named LaVoy Finicum told me that he and his fellow militants were greeted on their arrival by a bald eagle, which spread its wings and took off from a fence post, indubitably a herald of American freedom. There were few birds, certainly no eagles, soaring above the compound the next day—just a flock of journalists hanging around the entrance of the occupied area, stamping their feet…

I like Bernie Sanders. In my calmer moments, I know it’s not fair to blame him for his annoying fanboys—the Bernie bros—who write off Hillary Clinton’s supporters as rich white women or party hacks and dismiss wanting to see a liberal, pro-choice Democratic woman in the White House as “identity politics.” I think it’s great that Bernie is giving Hillary a run for her money. He’s pushing her to the left, showing pundits and politicos that there’s more of a constituency for progressive politics than they think, and he may even help spark a grassroots movement that outlasts his campaign. Hillary supporters should be grateful to him as well: The better he debates, the cleverer she has to be; the more popular he becomes, the less her nomination will look…

Socialism, it turns out, can be a form of identity politics. Some feminists, including Suzanna Danuta Walters, brandish a “red-diaper baby” heritage or some other cultural or sentimental affinity to hint that supporting Hillary Clinton’s candidacy doesn’t just represent some corporate gloss on feminism; it’s a genuinely radical position. But no one who makes this argument can articulate what, beyond her identity as a woman, qualifies Clinton as a passable candidate for socialist feminists. That’s understandable because, in a primary against an independent socialist who has been attracting an astonishing level of grassroots support, there are no socialist-feminist reasons to support Hillary Clinton. Socialist feminism assumes that redistribution is the best way to begin improving life for the vast majority of women, both materially and socially. To take a none-too-radical…

About Europa they could never agree, the Old Masters. Yet the story is simple enough: A girl is abducted from a beach by a bull and carried across the sea. The bull is usually thought to be Zeus, the destination Crete, but what about the girl? Some say she is the trim-ankled daughter of Agenor, king of Tyre. For others she is an earth goddess, her capture marking the change from winter to spring. Some, noting that her name means “wide-faced” or “she of the broad countenance,” insist that Europa is the moon. Ovid tells us that the bull scented his breath with saffron to seduce her; Herodotus, who demystifies everything, has her abducted by sailors instead. Roberto Calasso’s labyrinthine take on the Greek myths, The Marriage of Cadmus and…