LAST MONTH, Newt Gingrich claimed that President Obama was comprehensible only to those who "understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior." Paul Ocobock argues that this is more than mere race-baiting: "Ideas about colonialism...are central to Gingrich's own intellectual past....While we have no proof of Obama's Kenyan, anticolonialist mindset, there is in fact evidence of Gingrich's rather Belgian, colonialist worldview." (Photo: Mission School in Bolobo, Congo; Harry H. Johnston/NYPL)

ACORN SPENT decades mobilizing poor Americans to better their communities and elect leaders who would advocate for them, but it only became a household name when the Right turned it into a punching bag. Writes Jack Clark, "ACORN proved powerful enough to earn the enmity of very powerful forces determined to destroy the organization, but not powerful enough to defend itself from these attacks." (Photo: Andrew Breitbart; Shal Farley/Wikimedia Commons/2009)

A NUMBER of new advocacy groups have fixed their attention on food-a focus that brings together "those concerned with health, the environment, food quality, globalization, workers' rights and working conditions, access to fresh and affordable food, and more sustainable land use," write Robert Gottlieb and Anupama Joshi. These groups now "show promise of contributing to and inspiring a new social movement." (Photo: Steven Walling/Wikimedia Commons/2007)

THE RIGHT-WING federalists of the Tea Party propose "dismantling the central government as we know it," writes Gary Gerstle. In the face of electoral losses, the Left must assert that another federalism is possible - one which "would call on states to act in the public interest, and would seek to turn state governments into what the liberal jurist Louis Brandeis once celebrated as 'laboratories of democracy.'" (Photo: Sage Ross/Wikimedia Commons/2009)

MANY ON the Left are frustrated with the piecemeal nature of the Democrats' achievements since 2009, and the slow rate at which they've unfolded. Conor Williams warns them against the trap of cynicism: "[T]he onus is on [progressives] to make their case more compelling. This will be unquestionably difficult in the current context...[T]he most necessary things often are." (Photo: Pete Souza/White House/2009)

AUSTERITY POLICIES rule the day across Europe, and resurgent Republicans promise the same for the United States if they're elected in November. Daniel Greenwood argues against the faulty logic of austerity's proponents: "Dedication to making our fellow Americans miserable will achieve just misery. Investment, not penny-pinching penury, is the route to both greater justice and greater affluence." (Photo: Announcement of "Pledge to America"; House GOP/2010)

OFFICIALS IN the Obama White House are considering measures that would make digitally encrypted information more easily accessible to federal law enforcement. Siva Vaidhyanathan argues that these efforts are misguided in multiple ways: "[S]uch policies would be intrusive to the innocent, a slight hassle for the guilty, expensive for all, and would give us a false sense of security-a description that applies to many post-9/11 policies." (Photo: Mike Pellegrini/Wikimedia Commons/2007)

IMMIGRATION HAS become a defining feature of the governor's campaign in Nebraska this year. Julie Greene explains how corn helped bring this situation about: "Following Nebraska corn as it travels across the United States, to foreign countries like Mexico and back to meatpacking plants in Nebraska, illuminates the forces that made immigration a hot-button issue." (Photo: Blamfoto/Wikimedia Commons/2005)

IN A recent interview, President Obama lashed out at progressives who are "sitting on their hands complaining" with midterm elections weeks away. Thomas Meaney and Stephen Wertheim argue that president's anger stems from the tension between the electorate's "appetite for principled leadership" and Obama's prudential spirit. But for Obama's program to succeed, "even prudence calls for principle. It's time to present a vision for America." (Photo: Pete Souza/White House/2009)

WITH THE vote on self-determination for South Sudan mere months away, the international community has once again turned its attention to the country. Yet Darfur remains outside the spotlight, even as the Khartoum regime's menacing "New Strategy for Darfur" portends worsening violence. Writes Eric Reeves: "The New Strategy reads like an attempt to clear the ground for the final solution to the Darfur problem." (Photo: IDP camp near Nyala, South Darfur; USAID/Wikimedia Commons/2005)

LIXIN FAN'S Last Train Home is a "brilliant and harrowing documentary," write Leonard Quart and Bill Kornblum. Though the film takes only one family as its subject, Lixin manages to capture "what millions of rural Chinese are experiencing in the rush of modernization and economic growth." (Photo: Beijing Railway Station (Charlie Fong/Wikimedia Commons/2009)

THE RESUMPTION of settlement construction last Monday has threatened to bring Israeli-Palestinian peace talks to an end. Gadi Taub writes that settlers must be opposed not only because they preclude Palestinian self-determination, but because of the threat they pose to Israel. "If they have their way, Zionism's great achievement, one place under the sun where the Jews are not a minority, would be lost." (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/2007).

TOO MANY students now believe that a middle-class life is impossible without a bachelor's degree. Yet the "college for all" philosophy is misguided, writes Ilana Garon: "[N]ot only does it fail to address the need for a workforce with specialized technical skills, but it has spawned a steep decline of vocational programs at the high school level, which should ideally be the training ground for work in twenty-first-century industries." (Photo: Mouleesha/Wikimedia Commons/2009)

THE COMING Insurrection attempted to revive the political pamphlet at a moment when the Left could have benefited from a renewed political orientation. But, as Robert Zwarg writes, the book can only offer "politics reduced to empty gestures of militancy....The Coming Insurrection is just a symptom of...crisis, rather than its remedy." (Photo: Francois Schnell/2005)

From the Fall 2010 issue of Dissent: Christopher Hitchens is a man without "lasting works of reportage, criticism, philosophy, or, dare I say it, literature," writes Eric Alterman. How, then, has he achieved celebrity status among English-speaking belletrists? There is at least one important reason: "Hitchens's genius undoubtedly lies in the art of the argument." (Photo: Stepher/2009/Wikimedia Commons)

WHEN FEISAL Mohamed hears President Obama called a "Muslim socialist," he doesn't feel fear, but "what you might call an audacious hope." "[M]y heart races with the glimpse of a glorious possibility. It is too satisfying an idea to abandon and so I refuse to do so, especially on al'Eid, the last day of Ramadan. A beer-drinking apostate Muslim like me-well, that's just really much too good a prospect to let go of." (Photo: Chuck Kennedy/Wikimedia Commons/2009)

Conor Williams defends the progressive tradition against its contemporary detractors: "[P]rogressives are waiting for their more organized opponents to define the debate, its terms, and their role in it. They...have been reduced to dismissing their opponents as unfair, as unenlightened, as racists, or as politically incorrect. This needn't happen." (Photo: Wikimedia/Eva Watson Schütze/1902)

Todd Gitlin on the "Ground Zero Mosque": "Let's be plain: the atmosphere has been overheated by one, and one only, source of cultural climate change. The inflammatory polluters are Manicheans who have found in Islam the (im)moral equivalent of Communism, and who, like McCarthyites of yore, are not into fine distinctions."

A BRIDGE over the Ibar River "both spans and symbolizes the divide" between Kosovar Albanians and Serbs in the city of Mitrovica, Gabriel O'Malley reports. "Had walls and barbed wire blocked access, the vision would have been stark, but here, with nothing but an open road before me, it was clear that something even more powerful than con- crete or steel was working to keep the bridge empty: fear." (Photo: Vedat Xhymshiti, 2010)

"THE HUMANITIES are designed to propagate the principles of the tolerant generalist," writes Akiva Gottlieb, "[but] cultural conservatives contend that the liberal arts nurture a cabal of conflict-averse weaklings, whose self-satisfied enlightenment will inevitably find itself mugged by various realities. Yet it might be worthwhile to consider how often the best novels--themselves acts of imaginative empathy--replicate this process." J-PG /2008 / Wikimedia Commons