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A P R I L 2 0 1 5
James Agee
Eqbal Ahmad
Ai Weiwei
Hannah Arendt
James Baldwin
Amiri Baraka
Moustafa Bayoumi
Wendell Berry
Kai Bird
Margaret Bourke-
White
Steve Brodner
Noam Chomsky
Alexander Cockburn
Sue Coe
Stephen F. Cohen
Arthur C. Danto
Bill de Blasio
E.L. Doctorow
Ariel Dorfman
Eric Drooker
W.E.B. Du Bois
Barbara Ehrenreich
Albert Einstein
Frances FitzGerald
Eric Foner
Mark Gevisser
Paula J. Giddings
Allen Ginsberg
Milton Glaser
Emma Goldman
Vivian Gornick
Clement Greenberg
William Gropper
Robert Grossman
D.D. Guttenplan
Melissa Harris-Perry
Christopher Hayes
Christopher Hitchens
Langston Hughes
Molly Ivins
Henry James
Martin Luther King Jr.
Freda Kirchwey
Stuart Klawans
Naomi Klein
Andrew Kopkind
Tony Kushner
John Leonard
Penny Lernoux
David Levine
Maria Margaronis
Michael Massing
Carey McWilliams
H.L. Mencken
Edward Miliband
Arthur Miller
Jessica Mitford
Marianne Moore
Michael Moore
Toni Morrison
Ralph Nader
Victor Navasky
Katha Pollitt
Adolph Reed Jr.
Marilynne Robinson
Edward W. Said
Kshama Sawant
Jeremy Scahill
Jonathan Schell
Ben Shahn
Daniel Singer
Mychal Denzel Smith
Rebecca Solnit
Edward Sorel
Art Spiegelman
John Steinbeck
I.F. Stone
Hunter S. Thompson
Tom Tomorrow
Touré
Calvin Trillin
Dalton Trumbo
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Gore Vidal
Alice Walker
Carrie Mae Weems
Edmund White
Amy Wilentz
Patricia J. Williams
William Appleman
Williams
Ellen Willis
JoAnn Wypijewski
Howard Zinn
1916: Women line up at Planned Parenthood’s first health center
2014: Supporters rally to protect women’s health
Making history, together
Planned Parenthood congratulates our friends and partners
at The Nation for 150 years of groundbreaking journalism
1
The Nation
The Nation.
since 1865
Freda Kirchwey, the first woman editor of The Nation, said,
“Anniversaries should be approached without awe.” That was
seventy-five years ago. The Nation’s longevity over 150 years
is a remarkable feat—especially in our fast-changing media
landscape. ¶ For the magazine to survive and thrive for another century and
a half, however, The Nation will have to adapt. Indeed,
sixty years ago, Kirchwey’s successor Carey McWilliams
declared: “The Nation must change, as it has changed in
the past, if only to encompass certain harsh realities of
present-day American journalism.” The Nation, he added,
has a “special responsibility to report the significant hap-
pening that might otherwise go unreported, to air un-
popular views and controversial issues.” When every day
seems to bring the demise of another iconic voice, and the
news is increasingly dominated by sound bites and gossip,
The Nation’s commitment to covering the issues that mat-
ter, giving space to unconventional news and
views, takes on even greater urgency.
This special issue, which I have co-edited
with my valued colleague D.D. Guttenplan,
our London correspondent, weaves together
voices from The Nation’s rich history with
contributors writing about the current cul-
tural and political moment. In three sections
of archival excerpts, each representing five
decades of the magazine’s history, we reprint
some of the best that was thought and said
in our pages—much of it inspiring and eerily prescient,
some of it shocking, but all of it fascinating to read. We
have also included a few selections that turned out to be
less than prophetic. As we look toward the future, the
mistakes of our past remind us that taking a principled
stand often requires running intellectual risks.
Interspersed with the archival excerpts are three sec-
tions of newly commissioned material. In the first, “The
Nation and the Nation,” writers explore the magazine’s
surprising influence on everything from poetry to femi-
nism, radicalism to right-wing conservatism, Cuba to
coverage of the arts. In “Fierce Urgencies,” contributors
consider topics as pressing today as at any time in the
last 150 years, including the politics of fear, from anti-
communism in the 1950s to Islamophobia today, and the
relationship of the left to power—in movements, in elec-
toral politics and in government. Finally, in “Radical Fu-
tures,” Nation writers map out new ideas and strategies
for radicals, progressives and liberals seeking to expand
the terms of our public discussion and look beyond the
present moment. Throughout these sections, we repub-
lish a selection of the most dazzling poetry and art that
has appeared in our pages, as well as newly commissioned
work by some of the most exciting artists working today.
Reading through the issue, I was struck by the many
continuing conversations among Nation contributors,
the deep correspondences between past and
present ideas about what it would mean to
imagine a radically better future. But then
The Nation’s founding prospectus, 150 years
ago, called for “a more equal distribution of
the fruits of progress and civilization.” That
still seems like a good idea.
This momentous anniversary will also be
marked by Guttenplan’s spirited new book,
The Nation: A Biography. Excerpts here lend
historical context to the issue, and selections
from the transcript of a recent Nation-sponsored conver-
sation at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black
Culture point the way toward a revival of the abolition-
ist project that launched this magazine, exploring what it
might mean to actually finish the work of Reconstruction.
This year also marks my twentieth anniversary as edi-
tor of The Nation. I came to the magazine as an intern at
the outset of the Reagan years, following in the footsteps
of remarkable editors like Carey McWilliams, Victor
Navasky and, of course, Freda Kirchwey—an early femi-
nist, a fiercely principled and early opponent of fascism,
a determined foe of McCarthyism and an inspiration to
me—who led the magazine from 1937 to 1955. My two
decades as editor have coincided with turbulent times,
both for The Nation and the nation: from the Clinton im-
peachment to the Supreme Court’s selection of George
There Are Always
Alternatives
A p r i l 2 0 1 5
James Agee
Hannah Arendt
Eqbal Ahmad
Ai Weiwei
James Baldwin
Amiri Baraka
Moustafa Bayoumi
Wendell Berry
Kai Bird
Margaret Bourke-
White
Steve Brodner
Noam Chomsky
Alexander Cockburn
Stephen F. Cohen
Sue Coe
Bill de Blasio
Arthur C. Danto
Mychal Denzel Smith
E.L. Doctorow
Ariel Dorfman
Eric Drooker
W.E.B. Du Bois
Barbara Ehrenreich
Albert Einstein
Frances FitzGerald
Eric Foner
Mark Gevisser
Paula J. Giddings
Allen Ginsberg
Milton Glaser
Emma Goldman
Vivian Gornick
William Gropper
Robert Grossman
Clement Greenberg
D.D. Guttenplan
Melissa Harris-Perry
Christopher Hayes
Christopher Hitchens
Langston Hughes
Molly Ivins
Henry James
Martin Luther King Jr.
Freda Kirchwey
Stuart Klawans
Naomi Klein
Andrew Kopkind
Tony Kushner
John Leonard
Penny Lernoux
David Levine
Maria Margaronis
Michael Massing
Carey McWilliams
H.L. Mencken
Edward Miliband
Arthur Miller
Jessica Mitford
Marianne Moore
Michael Moore
Toni Morrison
Ralph Nader
Victor Navasky
Katha Pollitt
Adolph Reed Jr.
Marilynne Robinson
Edward W. Said
Kshama Sawant
Jeremy Scahill
Jonathan Schell
Ben Shahn
Daniel Singer
Rebecca Solnit
Edward Sorel
Art Spiegelman
John Steinbeck
I.F. Stone
Hunter S. Thompson
Tom Tomorrow
Touré
Calvin Trillin
Dalton Trumbo
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Gore Vidal
Alice Walker
Carrie Mae Weems
Edmund White
Amy Wilentz
Patricia J. Williams
William Appleman
Williams
Ellen Willis
JoAnn Wypijewski
Howard Zinn
1
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04_06 Cover v2.indd 2
3/17/15 11:39 AM
K AT R I N A VA N D E N H E U V E L
2
April 6, 2015
Change is
inevitable,
but the one
constant in
The Nation’s
history has
been a faith
in what can
happen if you
tell people
the truth.
✒
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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strategy than military intervention—in 1954!
That independence has been one of the keys to The
Nation’s longevity—and has become ever more impor-
tant in an age when the need for dissident and rebellious
voices is ever more urgent. Our commitment to provid-
ing a venue for passionate arguments between liberals and
radicals has instilled in both a deep sense of ownership
in The Nation—and a stake in its continued survival. Fi-
nally, The Nation’s readiness to fight and refight the same
battles—a persistence that permeates every page of this
issue—has inspired a rare and precious devotion among
our readers. As the great Carey McWilliams once said, “It
is precisely because The Nation’s backers cared more about
what it stood for than what it earned that the magazine
has survived.”
Yet, while i am delighted to honor
the magazine’s illustrious history, I am
determined to bring The Nation into the
twenty-first century. I have worked to
promote younger writers, appeal to young
readers, and engage with the issues and social movements
that inspire the passions of young people. Our country
and the world are undergoing extraordinary tectonic
shifts. When it comes to citizen control of government
or corporate power, we’re in the fight of our lives. These
times demand that The Nation be ever bolder, willing
to unshackle our imaginations and ready to think anew.
The advent of digital publishing and social media offers a
historic opportunity to reach vastly larger audiences and
have a greater impact in the world.
But it also represents a challenge. Storytelling and
opinion are no longer confined to the orderly columns
of print: videos, infographics, photo essays and real-time
reporting are now all common journalistic tools. At The
Nation, we’re committing to embracing this change. One
measure of our commitment: acclaimed director Barbara
Kopple’s rollicking documentary Hot Type: 150 Years of
The Nation will be a key part of our anniversary celebra-
tions around the country.
On July 6, 2015—exactly 150 years from the debut of
The Nation’s first issue—we’ll launch a new website, rede-
signed from top to bottom. The reimagined TheNation
.com is elegant, nimble and innovative, and I believe it
will ensure that The Nation is more vital than ever for the
next generation of readers. At the same time, print re-
mains an anchor, an essential part of The Nation’s identity.
As breaking news continues to migrate online, the print
edition retains a distinct mission, offering considered
comment and a more curated opportunity to focus our
readers’ attention on matters of critical interest.
Change is inevitable, but the one constant in The Na-
tion’s history has been faith—not in political parties or
policies, but in what can happen when you tell people
the truth. Our very first issue described “the conflict of
the ages, the great strife between the few and the many,
between privilege and equality, between law and power,
between opinion and the sword.” This anniversary issue is
a record of the last 150 years of that conflict—and as long
as The Nation is around, that fight will go on.
150th
W. Bush in 2000; from September 11 and the invasion of
Iraq to the revelations of torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib
and elsewhere. Then there was Hurricane Katrina, Amer-
ica’s worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and,
today, the risk of a new Cold War with Russia.
One of my most important responsibilities has been
guiding The Nation through periods of strife, from the
grim days after 9/11 to our early and unwavering opposi-
tion to the Iraq War. Criticizing government policy in
wartime is not a path to popularity. But I drew on the
strength of my predecessors, who were also willing to
take unpopular stances, animated by The Nation’s en-
during principles. There have been electrifying mo-
ments, too: the election of Barack Obama, the first black
president in our history; and the proliferation of social
movements at home and abroad, including Occupy Wall
Street and #BlackLivesMatter. I have never—yet—expe-
rienced a week like the one described in the very first line
of The Nation’s first issue: “The week has been singularly
barren of exciting events.”
Instead, the decades have only increased my respect
for this extraordinary institution and the debates, both
civil and uncivil, that fill its pages—and now its web
pages. Our columnists and contributors argue and de-
bate among themselves on matters of principle, politics,
policy and even morality.
Through it all, I have my own passions and fixed
points on my political compass. These include an abid-
ing belief in inside/outside politics—that against en-
trenched injustice, it takes a movement of courageous
citizens sick and tired of being sick and tired, but also
principled political leaders with the will and the skill to
push change through a system designed to impede it.
They also include the conviction that only an organized
people can avert the theft of our country by oligarchical
money and dismantle the rigged system that cheats too
many working and poor people; that democracy without
women is not democracy; and that we’d be wise to get
our own house in order before remaking the globe. And
while we’re at it, isn’t it high time to craft a politics of
hope, not of fear? Of true security, not perpetual war?
Above all, I see myself as the steward of an idea that
has sustained The Nation since its founding: the idea that
there are always alternatives—in history, in politics, in
life—that would make our country and the world a more
humane, just and secure place.
Take racial justice—a commitment that formed part of
The Nation’s founding purpose in 1865. In this issue, you
can read James Baldwin’s eloquent, outraged report from
what in 1966 he called “occupied territory”—meaning
not the Middle East, but Harlem. His essay has particular
echoes in our own time, but these same parallels are ap-
parent in our coverage of feminism, of corporate power,
of anti-imperialism and many other topics. Throughout
its history, The Nation has challenged the conventional
wisdom and narrow consensus of our public debate. We
have repeatedly championed proposals originally labeled
heretical, only to see them accepted as common sense
a generation later. For instance, The Nation argued that
reaching a negotiated solution in Vietnam was a better
T H E N A T I O N
1 5 0 Y E A R S
Bryan Stevenson
Cultural Freedom Prize for his
work on behalf of Alabama’s
Equal Justice Initiative
2014
Max Blumenthal
An Especially Notable Book Award
for Goliath: Life and Loathing in
Greater Israel (Nation Books, 2013)
David Zirin
Fellowship for his social critique
through the lens of sports writing
on football star Jim Brown
Alexis Bonogofsky
Fellowship for her efforts to
build coalitions between
indigenous groups and ranchers
to fight coal development in
southeastern Montana
Steve Erickson
Lifetime Achievement Award for Fiction
Joseph Stroud
Lifetime Achievement Award for Poetry
Claudia Rankine
Award for Poetry
Adrian Matejka
Fellowship for Poetry
Jamaal May
Fellowship for Poetry
Jill McDonough
Fellowship for Poetry
LITERARY
Awards & Fellowships
CULTURAL FREEDOM
Awards & Fellowships
Mitchell S. Jackson
Fellowship for Fiction
www.lannan.org
Lannan Foundation is a family foundation
dedicated to cultural freedom, diversity, and creativity
through projects that support exceptional
contemporary artists and writers, as well as inspired
Native activists in rural indigenous communities.
The Foundation recognizes the profound and often
unquantifiable value of the creative process and
is willing to take risks and make substantial
investments in ambitious and experimental thinking.
Understanding that globalization threatens all
cultures and ecosystems, the Foundation is
particularly interested in projects that encourage
freedom of inquiry, imagination and expression.
AWARDS & FELLOWSHIPS
T H E N AT I O N A N D T H E N AT I O N
38
Freedom’s Song
eric foner
Illustrated by Steve Brodner
44
Night Thoughts
joann wypijewski
48
Going All the Way
rick perlstein
Illustrated by Eugène Mihaesco
52
How to Lose Friends
and Influence People
elizabeth pochoda
53
The Dream Life of Desire
ange mlinko
56
Spreading Feminism
Far and Wide
betsy reed and katha pollitt
Illustrated by Frances Jetter
60
Cuba Libre
peter kornbluh
64
How I Got That Story
david corn
67
Cruising to Port
calvin trillin
68
Radical Hope
maria margaronis
70
Separated at Birth
ariel dorfman
Illustrated by Yuko Shimizu
73
Who We Are, Then and Now
D E C A D E S
20
The Nation:
A Biography Part I
d.d. guttenplan

1865–1875
22
E.L. Godkin, Henry James,
John Richard Dennett,
Frederick Law Olmsted

1875–1885
26
Lewis Henry Morgan,
E.L. Godkin


1885–1895
28
E.L. Godkin; with a reflec-
tion by Rochelle Gurstein

1895–1905
32
Horace White, Charles
Sanders Peirce, Bernard
Berenson, D.M. Means,
Rollo Ogden; with a reflec-
tion by Elinor Langer

1905–1915
36
Annie R.M. Logan, Oswald
Garrison Villard, Simeon
Strunsky; with a reflection
by Richard Kreitner

1
editor’s letter
There Are Always
Alternatives
katrina vanden heuvel

8
Founding
Prospectus
10
Letters to
the Editor
16
Beneath
the Radar
gary younge
18
The Liberal
Media
eric alterman
T H E N A T I O N
1 5 0 Y E A R S
The Nation.
since 1865
5
The Nation
F I E R C E U R G E N C I E S
108
A Sense of Obligation
An Interview With
marilynne robinson
109
The Roads Not Taken
victor navasky
111 His Master’s Voice


Illustration by Victor Juhasz
112
The Left in Power
walden bello
116
Revisiting “Myths About
the Middle East”
kai bird
119 Drawing the Line


Illustration by Art Spiegelman
120
Lesser-Evilism We Can
Believe In
michael tomasky
124
Occupy and Organize
robert l. borosage
127
Weird Bedfellows
michael sorkin
128
Game Not Over
helen lewis
129 All the Right Enemies


Illustration by Tom Tomorrow
132
“Why Do They Hate Us?”
moustafa bayoumi
134
Michael Moore
for President
michael moore
D E C A D E S
74
The Nation:
A Biography Part II
d.d. guttenplan

1915–1925
76
Roger Nash Baldwin, Floyd
Dell, Art Young, William
MacDonald, H.L. Mencken;
with reflections by Michelle
Goldberg and Bill de Blasio

1925–1935
82
Zona Gale, William Grop-
per, Langston Hughes, Ben
Shahn, Oswald Garrison
Villard, Heywood Broun,
Paul Y. Anderson, Albert
Einstein, Emma Gold-
man; with reflections by
Touré and Vivian Gornick

1935–1945
90
Margaret Bourke-White,
John Dos Passos, Mar-
garet Marshall, Norman
Thomas, John Steinbeck,
Freda Kirchwey, Clem-
ent Greenberg, I.F. Stone

1945–1955
96
Freda Kirchwey, James Agee,
Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul
Sartre, Manny Farber,
Carey McWilliams, Bernard
Fall, Ray Bradbury, Oscar
Berger; with a reflection
by Frances FitzGerald

1955–1965
102
W.E.B. Du Bois, Ralph
Nader, Dalton Trumbo,
Howard Zinn, Harold Clur-
man, Carleton Beals, Jessica
Mitford; with a reflection
by Paula J. Giddings
D E C A D E S
142
The Nation:
A Biography Part III
d.d. guttenplan

1965–1975
144
Eqbal Ahmad, Wendell Berry,
Martin Luther King Jr., Rich-
ard A. Cloward and Frances
Fox Piven, Hunter S. Thomp-
son, James Baldwin; with
reflections by Wen Stephen-
son and Carrie Mae Weems

1975–1985
152
Orlando Letelier, David
Levine, Penny Lernoux,
Edmund White, William
Appleman Williams, Gore
Vidal, Daniel Singer, Robert
Grossman, Barbara Ehren-
reich, E.P. Thompson; with a
reflection by Greg Grandin

1985–1995
160
Christopher Hitchens, Ai
Weiwei, John Leonard,
Andrew Kopkind, Alexander
Cockburn, Alice Walker,
Edward Miliband, Katha
Pollitt, Tony Kushner, Adolph
Reed Jr., Sue Coe, Robert
Sherrill, Arthur Miller

1995–2005
168
Edward W. Said, Edward
Sorel, Marshall Berman, Mark
Hertsgaard, Arthur C. Danto,
Jonathan Schell, Ellen Willis,
Molly Ivins, William Greider

2005–2015
176
Naomi Klein, Jeremy
Scahill, Patricia J. Williams,
Tom Tomorrow, Richard
Kim, Melissa Harris-Perry,
Christopher Hayes, Laila
Lalami, Stephen F. Cohen
6
April 6, 2015
224
Aiming Higher:
Make College
Tuition Free
jon wiener
226
The Big Fix
thomas geoghegan
Illustrated by Sue Coe
230
Haiti: The Devil’s
Bargain
amy wilentz
233
Engendered:
Beyond the Binary
mark gevisser



B AC K TA L K
138
Toward a Third
Reconstruction
A forum at the Schomburg
Center for Research in
Black Culture


Eric Foner, Khalil Gibran
Muhammad, Darryl Pinckney,
Mychal Denzel Smith, Isabel
Wilkerson, Patricia J. Wil-
liams, Katrina vanden Heuvel
246
Why We
Can’t Wait
StudentNation writers
and former interns
discuss a radical future
251
Contributors
to This Issue
P O E M S
41
Robert Frost
46
Sylvia Plath
59
Frank O’Hara
115
William Butler Yeats
125
W.H. Auden
186
Claude McKay
196
John Berryman
202
Allen Ginsberg
204
Wallace Stevens
214
Adrienne Rich
220
Anne Sexton
223
LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka)
229
Elizabeth Bishop
248
William Carlos Williams
249
Marianne Moore
250
Mahmoud Darwish
R A D I C A L F U T U R E S
184
No Place for Self-Pity,
No Room for Fear
toni morrison
185
Unpredictable Weather
rebecca solnit
Illustrated by Eric Drooker
188
Beginning to See
the Light
jack o’dell
190
Saving the Commons
noam chomsky
Illustrated by Milton Glaser
194
Traces of Light
stuart klawans
198
Following the Sound
gene seymour
200 Skin in the Game
dave zirin
201
Home
e.l. doctorow
Illustrated by Mirko Ilic
206
Productive
Democracy
joel rogers
210
We Built This City
kshama sawant
212
An Investigative
Blueprint
michael massing
Illustrated by Marshall Arisman
218
Privacy 2.0:
Surveillance in
the Digital State
david cole
221
Move to Amend
john nichols
222
A Red by Any
Other Name
bhaskar sunkara
VOLUME 300, NUMBER 14,
April 6, 2015
The digital version of this issue is
available to all subscribers March 23
at TheNation.com.
Cover art © Jasper Johns/
Licensed by VAGA.
New York, NY
Jasper Johns (b. 1930).
Three Flags, 1958. En-
caustic on canvas,
30 5/8 x 45 1/2 x 4 5/8 in.
(77 .8 x 115.6 x 11.7 cm).
Whitney Museum of
American Art,
New York; purchased with
funds from the Gilman
Foundation Inc., the Lauder
Foundation, A. Alfred
Taubman, Laura Lee
Whittier Woods, How-
ard Lipman and Ed
Downe, in honor of the muse-
um’s fiftieth anniversary 80.32
Digital lmage © Whitney
Museum of American Art, NY
T H E N A T I O N
1 5 0 Y E A R S
S
TE
VE
B
R
O
D
N
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A Message From President Barack Obama
I n an era of instant, 140-character news cycles and reflexive toeing of the party line, it’s incredible to think of the 150-year
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through depression and war and the civil-rights movement, and honed as sharp and relevant as ever in an age of breathtak-
ing technological and economic change. Through it all, The Nation has exhibited that great American tradition of expanding our
moral imaginations, stoking vigorous dissent, and simply taking the time to think through our country’s challenges anew.
If I agreed with everything written in any given issue of the magazine, it would only mean that you are not doing your jobs. But
whether it is your commitment to a fair shot for working Americans, or equality for all Americans, it is heartening to know that an
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WHOLE STORY.”
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“WE’D BE LOST
WITHOUT HER.”
–HUFFINGTON POST
April 28, 1910
Sirs: I do not need to tell you that the
reports of my recent address in Pittsburgh
have, by piecemeal quotation, conveyed
an entirely false impression. You yourself
have made allowance for this distortion
in your kind editorial of this week. I can
only assure you, therefore, that I entirely
agree with the views of your editorial. It
would be inexcusable for any man respon-
sible for the administration of a university
to overlook the value of culture and of
all that quiet and deeper development of
the mind which displays itself in personal
poise, in quiet insight, in the finer forms
of intellectual power, rather than in public
service and material achievement.
I beg that you will not believe that
because I seem incapable of stating more
than one side of a question in any one
speech, I do not know and appreciate the
other side.
Woodrow Wilson
princeton university
August 24, 1921
My Dear Mr. Shaw:
I understand a number of friends are
writing to you and urging you to come to
the United States. May I say how grati-
fied we of The Nation would be should you
come to us?
Yours very sincerely,
Oswald Garrison Villard
Dear Mr. Villard:
This conspiracy has been going on
for years; but in vain is the net spread in
sight of the bird. I have no intention ei-
ther of going to prison with Debs or tak-
ing my wife to Texas, where the Ku Klux
Klan snatches white women out of hotel
verandas and tars and feathers them. If
I were dependent on martyrdom for a
reputation, which happily I am not, I
could go to Ireland. It is a less dangerous
place; but then the voyage is shorter and
much cheaper.
You are right in your impression that a
number of persons are urging me to come
to the United States. But why on earth do
you call them my friends?
G. Bernard Shaw
March 2, 1932
Sir: I have been a subscriber to The Nation
most of the time from its beginning until
now. I read its very first issue, and was so
delighted with its fine spirit, its splendid
forward look, its scholarship, its daring,
and the brilliant pen of Mr. Godkin, its
editor, that I subscribed at once. I was
then a student at the University of Chi-
cago, and I conceived the idea of organiz-
ing a Nation club. We met every Thursday
evening to discuss the last number of The
Nation, all the members being pledged
to read it before the meeting. We soon
became enthusiastic. To spend an evening
each week, with a company of alert and
eager minds, thinking about, digging into,
criticizing, weighing, trying to form intel-
ligent judgments on such living, vital mat-
ters was a new and amazingly stimulating
kind of education.
Mr. Editor, I venture to inquire
whether there ought not to be such clubs
all over the land. Ten thousand would
in ten years revolutionize the country’s
thinking and give us a new America.
J.T. Sunderland
ann arbor, mich.
April 4, 1959
Dear Sirs: [Nelson] Algren would have
been a lot more sympathetic to our work in
Chicago if he’d attended our reading and
not taken his information from expurgated
radio tapes, local newspaper crap and Time.
None of us lisps. What fairy he been talk-
ing to?
Gregory Corso, in respect to Shelley
Allen Ginsberg, in the name of Myakovsky
Peter Orlovsky, heart felt with
the beauty of Sergei Esenin
July 9, 1960
Dear Sirs: It is difficult to comment on
Robert Spivack’s article, “How Modern Is
Republicanism?,” because Mr. Spivack ob-
viously doesn’t understand the basic tenets
of the Republican Party. I think Republi-
canism today is modern. It has provided
civil rights, the greatest armed might in the
history of the country, a return to fiscal re-
sponsibility, and a recognition that central-
ized government, with its attendant power,
is the ultimate evil to all freedoms. That
power is the one thing that the Spivacks of
the country fail to take into consideration
as they proclaim themselves for more and
more government spending and control.
Barry Goldwater
US Senator (Ariz.)
January 1, 1968
Dear Sirs: Professor Toch asks: What
have the hippies contributed to soci-
ety? The answer is that they have at
least contributed a little color, a little
gaiety and humor, a little greater sense
of freedom, to our dreary, ugly and
murderous industrial culture. Have
professors of psychology, with their
salaries of $10,000 or $15,000 a year,
contributed as much? Half as much?
Anything at all?
Edward Abbey
tucson, ariz.
August 5, 1978
If I was doing my act I would say that I
deserve all those marvelous things you
said about me in your editorial [“Mu-
hammad Ali for Congress”]. But seri-
ously I am extremely flattered by your
appraisal of me. You sure done your
homework and covered all the bases.
It ain’t often that I am quoted so ac-
curately. But to get down to the nubbin,
I ain’t interested in politics. I mean like
running for office. I’m a world man. My
fellow man is not just an American and
my race is the human race. I’m shook up
when I see a child that is going hungry
or a mother who is without medical at-
tention. These are the things I’m inter-
ested in. And of course peace. Peace for
all men and all nations at all times.
Muhammad Ali
new york city
Letters
@thenation.com
Letters are condensed. Go to thenation.com/archive.
R
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10
April 6, 2015

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Letters
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February 13, 1989
It’s right to recommend
Mississippi Burning [“Films,”
Stuart Klawans]. It is a
thoroughly engrossing, well-
acted drama that reminds us
that legal segregation (apart-
heid) existed in our country
in the not-so-distant past.
Also, it correctly informs us
that in the 1960s, as it had
been since Reconstruction,
the Klan’s reign of terror
was supported and often
joined by local law enforce-
ment officials and politi-
cians. But Mississippi Burning
has numerous and at times
baffling distortions.
Blacks are only background
material. There is only the
barest suggestion that a move-
ment is going on throughout
the state to tear down segrega-
tion. Movement songs, the
beautiful spiritual armor of
that nonviolent struggle, are
badly short-changed. Chaney,
Goodman and Schwerner
were serious civil rights orga-
nizers; but what they did, what
the movement was about, are
completely neglected.
For anyone who lived
through the period (I was in
Mississippi and Georgia then),
the idea that the F.B.I. brought
an end to a segregated South
is about as ludicrous as say-
ing that noble elements inside
the Joint Chiefs of Staff were
responsible for ending the war
in Vietnam.
Somehow Hollywood finds
a way to use even controversial
history to prove “the system
works.” The excuse that “we’re
only making a movie” is hardly
enough to account for all this.
Abbie Hoffman
solebury, penn.
September 30, 1991
My girlfriend just told me to
leave. I’m sitting outside on
our kitchen roof (the dog-
house) here in Louisville.
And it’s hot as hell up here.
I’ve thought about this letter
for a long time now.
My dad started getting
The Nation in 1988. That
was the year I went to col-
lege, and many times he sent
me Xeroxed articles, mostly
from your newspaper. I knew
nothing of The Nation, and
up to then my father had
had no connections with any
news sources other than the
usual media. I don’t know
what prompted him to start
exploring. He can write you
all a letter about that. I am
here to tell you about the
impact The Nation has had
on our lives.
My dad has changed from
a man somewhat imprisoned
by himself and his sphere of
relations and responsibili-
ties into a man of the world,
shackled to history but with
an overview and a position.
And like most things in my
dad’s life, it has not come easy.
A gift bearing the burden of
responsibility. He has passed
the burden down to me.
Not to say that your
newspaper has been solely
responsible for this growth in
his or my life, but it has been
an important attribute. When
running against the tide of
fear, indifference and loss,
knowing you have comrades is
especially good. And once one
can look beyond self out into
the world, he or she would be
wise to take along a subscrip-
tion to The Nation. In your
pages, as in my heart, there is
faith, belief in good and bad,
and a desire for betterment.
Also, if where I am now
becomes my regular resting
place, old issues might be
crumpled up and used for
padding.
J. Britt Walford
louisville, ky.
150 years ago... The Nation magazine publishes its first issue •
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E. Lee is named Commander-in-Chief of Confederate Armies • Martin
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and subsequently assassinated • W.G. Grace makes his cricketing
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showdown • the steamboat SS Sultana explodes in the Mississippi
River, killing more than 1,700 passengers • Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland and Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend
are first published • the Ku Klux Klan is founded by Confederate
veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee • Francis Galton, inventor of the silent
dog whistle, introduces eugenics • Rudyard Kipling is born • and
OR Books, proud partners in the Nation’s superb e-book program,
is just 145 years away from publishing its first title, the NY Times
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To the editors of The Nation
from the editors of Lapham’s Quarterly:
Your splendid 150th
anniversary issue comes
bearing voices in time that
bring life to the mind, warmth
to the heart, meaning to America’s
democratic idea, courage to
wage war with prosperous fools.
You take up the weapon
of the past to advance the
hope of the future.
We thank you.
VOLUME V
II, NUMBE
R 2



SPRING 20
14
REVOLUTIO
NS
DEATH
VOLUME VI, NUMBER 4

FAL
L 2013
SWINDLE & FRAUD
VOLUME VIII, NUMBER 2 SPRING 2015
The Nation.
EDITOR & PUBLISHER: Katrina vanden Heuvel
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16
April 6, 2015
In the wake of the deaths of Mike Brown and Eric Gar-
ner, Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly had some advice for
black America: “Don’t abandon your children. Don’t
get pregnant at 14. Don’t allow your neighborhoods to
deteriorate into free-fire zones. That’s what the African-
American community should have on their T-shirts.” (That’s
either a very big garment or very small lettering.)
Whenever black kids get shot, black parents get lectured
about personal responsibility. If you raised your kids better,
goes the conservative logic, we wouldn’t have to shoot them.
Arguments about systemic discrimination and racist legacies are
derided as liberal excuses for bad behavior. Neither history nor
economics nor politics made Mike Brown grab Dar-
ren Wilson’s gun—that was his choice. Individuals,
we are told, are responsible for their own actions and
must be held accountable for them.
The vehemence with which this principle is held
is eclipsed only by the speed with which it is aban-
doned when it becomes inconvenient. Discussions
about choices and accountability change tenor when
we shift from talking about the black and the poor to
the powerful and well-connected.
The release of the Senate’s torture report in December re-
vealed far more extensive and brutal interrogation techniques
than had been admitted previously, and it also confirmed that
the CIA had lied to Congress, the White House and the media.
This didn’t happen by itself. To take just one example, someone
or some persons had to purée a mixture of hummus, pasta with
sauce, nuts and raisins; pour it into a tube; forcibly bend Majid
Khan over; shove the tube up his anus and then “let gravity do
the work.” And then they lied about it. The report showed with-
out question that American interrogators were operating outside
both domestic and international law. And yet none have been
arrested and charged, let alone prosecuted.
Similarly, millions of Americans and many foreign lead-
ers were spied upon by the NSA. A federal judge has ruled
such actions unconstitutional. But metadata does not collect
itself; instead, its collection was both ordered and executed by
people who then lied about it until they were exposed. Not a
single person has been held responsible. I have yet to hear Bill
O’Reilly custom-design a T-shirt for those people.
Indeed, the only known arrests in these cases have been of
those who exposed the crimes. Edward Snowden is on the run;
Chelsea Manning—the source for WikiLeaks, which showed the
US military killing innocents and laughing about it—is in jail;
John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on waterboarding, is out
of jail but still under house arrest. The crime, it seems, is not to
break the law but to report the infraction.
The point here is not to demand the slaughter of a scapegoat.
All of the incidents above were underpinned by shortcomings
that are fundamentally systemic and must be addressed. But it
is difficult to see how that can happen in the future if nobody
pays a penalty now for past wrongdoing. The moral hazard in
failing to hold people to account is self-evident: it sets a bad
example. Black kids aren’t the only ones who need role models.
But then the Manichaean reasoning of the right was always
bogus. Holding people responsible for their actions does not
contradict the notion that those actions have a context—just
because we have free will, it does not follow that we have free
rein. So when the left argues that problems are structural, we
do not mean that individuals should not be held to
account, but that without also holding accountable
the institutions that made their actions possible, one
merely changes the players, not the game.
Which brings us back to those Bill O’Reilly T-
shirts. The federal investigations into Ferguson lay
bare a corrupt, racist kleptocracy in which police
harassed African-Americans with impunity, stuff-
ing the city’s coffers with their money and its jails
with their bodies. But when officials or their friends
broke the law, they had no problem pardoning themselves.
“Don’t steal, cheat, harass or discriminate”: that’s what these
white people should have on their T-shirts.
This was the system that killed Mike Brown and produced
his killer. The Justice Department found no evidence to pros-
ecute Darren Wilson, but ample
evidence to incriminate the Fergu-
son police and the broader criminal-
justice system. As of this writing,
the county clerk has been fired, the
city manager has “parted ways,” and
two police officers, the municipal
judge and the chief of police have
resigned. Wilson, it appears, was the
only incorruptible man in the city.
Nobody has been charged. The law
apparently does not apply to them.
“Where all are guilty, no one is,”
argued the political theorist Han-
nah Arendt. “Confessions of collective guilt are the best possible
safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magni-
tude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.”
Welcome to Ferguson, where Mike Brown allegedly stole
cigarillos and is dead, while the members of the white power
structure stole an entire civic apparatus and the constitutional
rights of black residents but remain at their desks.
150th
Nobody in
Ferguson’s white
power structure
has been charged
with a crime. The
law apparently
does not apply to
them.
Irresponsible Power
IL
LU
S
TR
AT
IO
N
:
A
N
D
Y
FR
IE
D
M
A
N
Gary Younge
Accountability isn’t only for black people.

president
secretary-treasurer
executive vice president
Randi Weingarten
Lorretta Johnson
Mary Cathryn Ricker
The American Federation of Teachers is a union of 1.6 million professionals that champions fairness; democracy;
economic opportunity; and high-quality public education, healthcare and public services for our students, their families
and our communities. We are committed to advancing these principles through community engagement, organizing,
collective bargaining and political activism, and especially through the work our members do.
150
LET’S CELEBRATE!
Congratulations
to The Nation on 150 years of connecting thinkers,
doers and the most forward-looking writers of their time.
YEARS
The Nation.
18
A
week before his 2009 inauguration, President-
elect Barack Obama chose as his first high-
profile social engagement a dinner party at
George Will’s house, where he was joined by
William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer and
David Brooks. Obama no doubt intended to demonstrate his
desire to reach across the ideological divide and engage his
neoconservative critics in a healthy debate. Conservatives saw
a president they could roll.
Part of the problem was Obama’s misplaced confidence that
he could heal the divisions forged in the Bush era. A second
complication arose from his unique position as the first African-
American president. But the fundamental problem
was a much deeper one that, in retrospect, has come
to define US politics in the Obama era and remains
the greatest obstacle to liberal progress.
The primary difference between liberalism and
conservatism, at least in theory, is that the latter is
an ideology and the former isn’t. Conservatism, as
Milton Friedman argued, posits that “freedom in
economic arrangements is itself a component of
freedom broadly understood, so economic free-
dom is an end in itself.” Liberalism, however, as Lionel Tril-
ling observed, “is a large tendency rather than a concise body
of doctrine.” And while John Kenneth Galbraith helpfully
pointed out that only those programs and policies that honor
“the emancipation of belief” are worthy of the term, liberal-
ism, at bottom, is pragmatism. Conservatives desire low taxes
and small government because this is how they define freedom.
They like to pretend that liberals prefer the opposite in both
cases, but the truth is that liberals are OK with whatever works.
Our political dysfunction has many sources, but one way
to describe our problem is this: we have allowed conserva-
tives to define the terms of debate at a time when conserva-
tives have lost all sense of moral, intellectual and especially
practical responsibility.
In The Liberal Imagination, Trilling famously complained
that he could find “no conservative or reactionary ideas in
general circulation.” What we had instead were “irritable
mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.” Conservatives
subsequently invested a great deal of money to address this
problem, and the result was the rise of a bevy of right-wing
intellectuals—Friedman, James Q. Wilson, Alan Bloom and
Gertrude Himmelfarb among them—able to offer arguments
that liberals ignored at their peril.
Today, however, we have no such figures and nothing re-
sembling challenging ideas. Will, undoubtedly America’s most
prominent conservative intellectual, thinks that rape victims
enjoy their “privileges,” that Ebola can be spread through the
air, and that global warming is a hoax. Faced with the fact that
97 percent of climatologists have formed a scientific consensus
about man-made climate change, he responded, “Where did that
figure come from? They pluck these things from the ether”—as
if his own purposeful ignorance were a counter to empirical data.
Conservative “wise man” Bill Kristol has achieved this status
by proving himself, time and again, to be the worst predictor in
the history of the punditocracy. Kristol recently summed up his
political philosophy in a debate about US policy in the Middle
East with Laura Ingraham—herself a symbol of the decline of
conservative thought—by asking, “What’s the harm of bomb-
ing them at least for a few weeks and seeing what
happens?” Charles Krauthammer’s analyses evince
a similarly reflexive belligerence, while David
Brooks, believe it or not, is too liberal to qualify.
Why do such smart guys say such stupid things?
The answer lies in the locus of power in today’s
conservative movement. The Koch brothers make
billions off the exploitation of carbon-producing
fossil fuels, while donating more than $67 mil-
lion to groups that deny the destruction it causes.
This is to say nothing of the nearly $900 million they plan to
raise for the Republican presidential nominee in 2016. Casino
magnate Sheldon Adelson, who handed out $150 million to
the Republicans and related groups during the 2012 elec-
tion cycle, believes the United States should drop an atomic
bomb in the Iranian desert and say:
“See! The next one is in the middle
of Tehran.” Media mogul Rupert
Murdoch thinks all the world’s
Muslims should be “held respon-
sible” for “their growing jihadist
cancer.” His networks and news-
papers spread the idiotic calumny
that the president is a secret Mus-
lim and an undocumented alien
who hates all white people (includ-
ing, apparently, his own mother).
Today’s conservative intellec-
tuals aren’t even bothering to offer
“irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.” In-
stead, they’re making calculated attempts to undermine our
democracy, exploiting and manipulating a public that has
decreasing resources for the kind of reliable information that
would lead to a pragmatic “liberal” response. It’s time we
woke up to that reality while we still have a country—and a
planet—left to save.
150th
Liberals have
let conservatives
define the terms
of debate at
a time when
conservatives
have lost all sense
of responsibility.
A Wake-Up Call for US Liberals
IL
LU
S
TR
AT
IO
N
:
A
N
D
Y
FR
IE
D
M
A
N
Eric Alterman
The state of conservative intellectual debate demonstrates the power of movement crazies.
April 6, 2015
Congratulations to
The Nation on your
150th anniversary
Member FDIC.
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amalgamatedbank.com
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progressive journalism. We are proud to share
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– Keith Mestrich, President & CEO
20
April 6, 2015
n june 25, 1863, as confederate
forces fought their way north toward Gettysburg, a group of wealthy New
Yorkers gathered at the Union League Club on 17th Street to hear a pitch.
The speaker, journalist and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted,
laid out a “dream of an honest weekly paper.” The idea was to aim not
for a large circulation, but for a select, influential readership. By the end
of the evening, Olmsted had his first thousand dollars. By the end of the
week, he had trustees, a fundraising committee and an editor: his friend
E.L. Godkin, an Anglo-Irish journalist who had covered the Crimean War
and toured the American South (inspired by Olmsted’s own writings). “The
thing starts so favorably,” Olmsted wrote to his wife, “I shall go into it
strong, meaning to succeed.”
But Olmsted was impulsive, and when an offer came that August to man-
other causes, Garrison proposed that the American
Anti-Slavery Society, which he had founded, should
be dissolved. But Wendell Phillips, who had joined
the movement after rescuing Garrison from a Boston
lynch mob thirty years earlier, disagreed, and a bitter
power struggle ensued.
It was in the midst of this battle for the future, and
legacy, of the abolitionist movement that James Miller
McKim, a Philadelphia activist with friends in both
camps, determined to start a national weekly to con-
tinue the work of The Liberator “on a broader ground.”
McKim soon had his funding, as well as a name for the
new magazine: The Nation. Now he needed a staff. Nor-
ton, of course, knew about Godkin’s interest in start-
ing his own weekly, and after getting him to recant his
skepticism about black male suffrage—his suggestion
that freedmen should have to earn a living for ten years
before voting was hardly a position that would appeal to
The Nation’s backers—Norton recommended Godkin to
his friend McKim.
“N o. i is afloat,” godkin wrote to nor-
ton on July 5, 1865, “and the tranquility
which still reigns in this city, under the
circumstances, I confess amazes me.”
“The political complexion of The Nation is not at
all doubtful,” sniffed The New York Times in a review
of the first issue. Radical on all questions regarding the
freed slaves, the magazine viewed the Civil War’s end
as a triumph not just for the Union, but for “demo-
cratic principles everywhere.” Nor did The Nation have
a great deal of sympathy for the defeated slaveholders.
“However much opposed we may be to political ven-
geance,” the editors wrote, “there is nobody who will
deny that men who have made themselves conspicuous
in instigating an appeal from the ballot to the sword
age an enormous gold mine in California, he turned
“The Paper,” as they still called it, over to Godkin, along
with a letter of introduction to Charles Eliot Norton,
editor of The North American Review. Godkin met with
Norton and received encouragement, but not invest-
ment, so he gave up.
In April 1865, Godkin wrote to Olmsted to con-
gratulate him on “the great events of the last fortnight.”
Lee’s surrender at Appomattox had left him “dumfoun-
dered,” and though he was thrilled by the Union vic-
tory, “I confess I should be very anxious about the terms
of reconstruction, if Lincoln were not to be president
for the next four years.” The letter was dated April
12, and long before it reached California, Lincoln was
dead. Yet even as the nation was binding up its wounds
and mourning the slain emancipator, the prospect of
victory was tearing the abolitionist movement apart.
The question was whether the Thirteenth Amend-
ment, in decreeing the end of slavery, also meant the
abolitionists’ work was done. William Lloyd Garrison,
editor of The Liberator, thought it was. Declaring “my
vocation as an Abolitionist, thank God, is ended,” and
wishing to devote himself to women’s suffrage and
O
Founded by abolitionists to finish the job
of Emancipation, The Nation became a
moribund defender of the status quo. But its
firm anti-imperialism, and one crusading
editor, brought it back to life.
D. D. G U T T E N P L A N
1865-1915
THE NAT ION : A B IOGRAPHY
T H E N A T I O N
1 5 0 Y E A R S
Excerpts from The
Nation: A Biography,
available as an
e-book or paperback
at www.thenation
.com/ebooks.
21
The Nation
can railroads, eventually taking control of the Northern
Pacific. With Godkin as one of his front men, Villard
bought the New-York Evening Post as a vehicle for his
interests. But Godkin came at a price: in addition to
being named one of the editors, Godkin demanded that
Villard also buy The Nation, leaving the new owner’s
brother-in-law (and Godkin’s longtime underling),
W.P. Garrison, in nominal charge.
I n the 1890s, the nation picked a fight with
the whole country—indeed, with the whole trend
of contemporary American foreign policy. The
roots of the magazine’s opposition to America becom-
ing a global empire are as tangled as the history of
American anti-imperialism. Though many of those who
opposed America’s wars did so for the reasons cited by
Henry David Thoreau in “Civil Disobedience,” there
had also always been a less high-minded reluctance to
get entangled in the affairs of darker, non-European
peoples—especially if they might then become Ameri-
can citizens. Nothing but trouble, The Nation warned
in 1898, would come from “dependencies inhabited by
ignorant and inferior races” with whom A