“Totalitarianism” is a powerful word rich in historical associations and rebounding in current political usage. The four books under review reflect both the term's range of usage and the enduring fascination with the phenomena it described. Totalitarianism's initial terminological siblings, “nazism” and “communism,” are applied chiefly to the original historical subjects that generated them. A close political cousin, “fascism,” long ago escaped its close ideological family and is applied to everything from brutal police to road hogs. In contrast, “totalitarianism,” formerly confined to a narrow political as opposed to a cultural context, is suddenly in play. In recent issues of the New York Times, David Brooks excoriates Iraqi proponents of “totalitarian theocracy” (5/16/2004); President Bush deplores the terrorists’ “totalitarian ideology” (5/29/05), and Condoleezza Rice abhors Iran as a “totalitarian state” (5/29/2005). A Central Asian despot is characterized as a “fragile totalitarian” in a feature by David E. Sangler (5/29/2005), and the group of army officers (the Military Council for Justice and Democracy) that overthrew President Maouya Sidi Ahmed Taya in Mauritania in August 2005 defend their decision “to put an end to the totalitarian practices of the deposed regime.” Totalitarianism is back, but what does it mean?

The examination and evaluation of Bismarck's statesmanship has been resumed with much vigor in Germany. The topic has always — and naturally — been a favorite of German historians. Yet the current discussion differs from previous examinations of Bismarck's policies. It is concerned not so much with a factual analysis of these policies as with their overall significance and validity.

A Few words may be in order at the outset to explain why I have chosen the title “Power and Morals and the Founding Fathers.” I believe that we can learn much from an inquiry into the basic thought and character of the first statesmen of the Republic that may help us in meeting the crisis of a divided world today. And such an inquiry can be most effectively pursued by a consideration of their views on power and morals.

To European economists, cartels are old acquaintances. Beyond the Atlantic, they have been under discussion since Kleinwaechter, in 1883, made them the object of the first analysis. It was about the time when, in this country, monopolies and trusts were much debated. As early as Europe waxed cartel-conscious, this country became monopoly and trust-conscious. Not that American scholars were unaware of the cartels—no less than Europeans were unaware of the trusts; but it appeared to most that the sin of industry in this country was “monopolies,” whereas the enemies of cartels in Europe were equally inclined to call the cartel the sin of their economies.

In the short-lived days of the NRA cartel-like organizations were entrusted with the establishment of industrial codes for market regulation. They were not called cartels, but actually they functioned, or were supposed to function, like cartels.

This question may be answered by “yes” or “no,” according to one's point of view. Mussolini's Fascism—that of the black shirts, of banners bearing the skull and bones emblem, of the so-called Roman salute, of parades, punitive expeditions with muskets, clubs and castor oil, of the East African Empire and the Albanian Kingdom—may be called dead, even buried. But the Fascism that ante-dates Mussolini, the Fascism of all times and all countries—that brand of Fascism never dies. It adapts itself, instead, to all climates and all temperatures; it dresses according to the fashion, disguises itself and hides. That brand of Fascism has not died because it is deathless.

This study examines the ideological and truth-seeking aspects of Ackerman's Social Justice in the Liberal State. Ackerman begins in a truth-seeking fashion by requiring all power and all distributive claims to be justified. In developing principles of social justice from imaginary dialogues that are assumed to be neutral toward the good, he defends the “neutrality principle” inadequately and employs it ideologically. The fundamental distributive principle, undominated equality, is derived from dialogues that are manipulated to prevent other principles from passing the “neutrality test.” Although Ackerman discusses issues of citizenship and birthrights that are ordinarily ignored, his attempt to protect the liberal state leads to ideological formulations.

Contrary to those social scientists who posit a close relationship between corporate interests, the capitalist state, and the nonpartisan research establishment, this paper challenges the linkage thesis through an examination of the early history of the Brookings Institution. As the nation's oldest and most prestigious “think tank,” the Brookings Institution played a multidimensional role in the public policy process. Robert S. Brookings, the capitalist who founded the institution in the aftermath of World War I, played little role in the subsequent history of the institution. Instead, the less reform-minded professional social scientists who staffed the organization shaped the character of the institution. In their defense of the market economy, Brookings economists emerged as leading opponents of the new liberal state.

One clear fact emerging from current public opinion polls is that most Americans have little confidence in both political leaders and the political system. At the time of this writing, the president's approval ratings have slipped to the lowest mark for any president since World War II – just above 25 percent, according to one poll. Members of Congress have hardly been faring better. Throughout 1977, even as the president's popularity began to slide down, approval ratings for Congress never went above 40 percent, ending the year at just above 30 percent. Indeed, all politicians have suffered from severely diminished status in the public eye. In one recent survey on occupational prestige, they were rated next to last among fifteen occupations listed, a step above salesmen and one below skilled workers.

This study questions a prevalent view of the First Amendment religion clauses which maintains they were intended to establish neutrality of the federal government between religion and nonreligion and thereby to establish not merely governmental religious pluralism but governmental secularism. Since the Bill of Rights is said to have been adopted to satisfy anti-Federalist objections to the original Constitution, what they said about religion in the ratification debates is comprehensively examined. They turn out to have been primarily concerned that the unamended Constitution was particularly dangerous to and tilted against religion. Hence they wanted not simply to prevent the new government from infringing on “religious liberty” (of individuals or states) but to redress the unamended Constitution's actual or potential tilt against religion. The First Congress debates are then examined from this rather different perspective to see what effect this concern may have had on the First Amendment religion clauses. It is argued that this concern produced a more complex constitutional position on religion and religious liberty than is commonly maintained. This position is not simply Madison/Jefferson separationism but a compromise which to some extent redressed the original Constitution's tilt against religion.

This article challenges the view that Aristotle's Poetics provides a defense against Plato's assault on poetry. I argue that Aristotle's discussion of poetry is at least as critical of the poetic depiction of the city and the gods as is the Platonic account. In the Poetics Aristotle does break with Plato in order to establish poetry's independence from philosophy. Aristotle's account of poetry as an independent activity should not, however, be read as a defense of poetry against Plato's subordination of poetry to philosophy. Instead, it is argued that Aristotle establishes poetry's independence from philosophy as a corrective to Plato's resort to poetry, thereby establishing that philosophy is completely autonomous from poetry.

It has recently been suggested that in Machiavelli's appreciation of what is grave and what is ridiculous “can be recognized … the spirit of modernity in its early phases, when it was fresh, bright, and eager.” This admittedly problematical assertion draws attention to Machiavelli's transformation of the premodern perception of gravity, wherein gravity and piety are closely associated. In this article, we consider how Machiavelli changes men's approach to gravity and piety by examining in particular his treatment of Dante, a representative of the premodern point of view. We find that Machiavelli discards the old view of gravity and piety because of its utility to the church and because Christian gravity is a safeguard against too readlly taking oaths, one of the things critical for Machiavelli's enterprise.

On october 5, 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt aroused the democratic world by calling for a quarantine of the aggressor nations. Since that morning in Chicago there has always been uncertainty as to how the President meant to implement his speech. A review of the available documents concerning the aftermath of the quarantine speech provides four additional notes which help clear up this uncertainty. The first demonstrates that Roosevelt instead of backing down before seemingly overwhelming opposition from the American public, believed he could persuade not only his fellow countrymen but “90 percent of the population of the world” to quarantine the aggressor nations. The second shows that the President looked upon the Nine Power Conference which met in Brussels during November, 1937, as an opportunity to initiate positive action in the Far East. The third, by an analysis of the activities of Norman Davis, the American delegate to that conference, indicates the extent to which the President was willing to go in imposing a quarantine against Japan. The last note attempts to explain briefly why by mid November Roosevelt finally “pulled in his horns” and permitted the Nine Power Conference to disintegrate. From these notes comes further support for the conclusions that the man who met defeat at Brussels was President Roosevelt and the policy which failed to be adopted was that of a quarantine, of containment, of the aggressor nations.

Few philosophic devices have proved as influential or enduring as the tripartition of the soul in Plato's Republic. For all its virtues, however, we are mistaken to believe that the tripartite model is sufficient to convey, or that it was meant to convey, all the elements of the dialogue's psychological teaching. What is needed is an interpretation that takes fuller account of the soul's forces, and not just its “parts” (which are metaphorical anyway). This article outlines the basic elements of such an interpretation. After considering the virtues and limits of the tripartite model and of the structural perspective from it arises, the article examineseros and spiritedness, the soul's chief and most politically consequential forces, both in themselves and in their (surprising) relation to one another.

Few philosophic devices have proved as influential or enduring as the tripartition of the soul in Plato's Republic. The division of the psyché into the rational, spirited, and desiring parts, first introduced by Socrates in book 4, established the terms of psychological thought not only for the remainder of the Republic but for a great part of Western thought even to the present day. Perhaps even more important than the particular content of this schema has been the mode of analysis that it exemplifies. With Plato began a tradition of considering the soul as a differentiated structure whose respective parts perform specific, assignable functions.

The Supreme Court's 1992 abortion decision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, an the Due Process liberty cases of which it is among the most recent, can be fully understood only by attention to the often-neglected common law dimension of American constitutionalism. The fracture on the Court in this line of cases follows a severing of two elements of common law adjudication: the rule of precedent, on the one hand, and the authority of tradition, on the other. The authors of the joint opinion in Casey craft a rationalized rule of precedent in the manner of the modern reinterpreters of the common law, such as Justices Holmes and Cardozo. The dissenters, by contrast, here and in related cases, seek to recover the legal status of tradition in constitutional interpretation.

Modern principles of morality are inadequate for solving the structural problems faced by contemporary societies. Early in the modern epoch the normative, social concept of nature that had supported Greek, Roman, and medieval ethical theories, became transformed into a purely empirical, private one. Thus for Hobbes, Locke, and most eighteenth-century political theorists, the “state of nature” referred to the opposite of a social state, ruled by lawful custom, it had meant before. The idea of “natural right” which gradually emerged as a substitute principle was denned in individualist terms. With the notion of “general will” Rousseau attempted to establish a more genuinely social basis for the State.

The Science, or as others prefer to call it, the study of international relations is one of the youngest members of the family of the social sciences. Its independent status has not yet been fully recognized by all academic circles and many historians and international lawyers would consider it to be trespassing on their respective fields of study. This is especially true for Europe.

After the summit meeting in Moscow in June 1974, Dr. Kissinger called for a national debateon the issue of strategic arms and arms control. No such debate has taken place. It has been overtaken by the more immediate issues of inflation, the liquidity of the international banking system, and the extent to which Arab oil profits can be reduced, offset or recycled. But these more immediate issues are, in turn, dependent on what happens in the Middle East with its tripleproblem of the unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict, the oil weapon, and Soviet ambitions to control the world's economic jugular, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The ability of the United States favorably to influence the resolution of these issues depends upon the strength of its ties with other countries with similar interests and its economicand military potential. Thus, we are once more brought face to face with the interdependence ofour economic and our national security policies.