What to do if the Republicans win on Tuesday

Sam Smith - If the Republicans win on Tuesday there's a big chance of massive numbers of sensible Americans going into depression, withdrawing from politics or replacing their positive goals with just anger. But there's another more useful approach: to use our time to work to restore American democracy, to illustrate what a kinder, wiser …

Our biggest subcultures

 Sam Smith – Starting with the presidency of Ronald Reagan, America began to turn its back on the New Deal and Great Society and develop two powerful subcultures. One consists of the destructively dominant, those who have the money and strength to gain power while ignoring the needs of others. The other is the dysfunctionally …

Why I feel a bit odd

Sam Smith - For the first time I can remember, I feel somewhat at odds with a lot of liberal talk. It's not that I oppose the goals, but rather I find myself uncomfortable with some of the approaches and language being used to reach them.  For example, the huge preference for the phrase "anti-racism" …

The time we’re in

 Sam Smith - The other day I found myself wondering who among the famous and powerful I still admired and discovered my list painfully short. Instead, I began thinking of liars and con artists or, at best, popular figures much better at appearing to be what they were meant to be than actually being it.  …

Recovering decency

Sam Smith - One of the matters that rarely gets discussed these days is how power has replaced decency as a fundamental standard of our society. Thanks to the rise of corporatism, legal interpretation of social matters, media priorities and entertainment values, we have become obsessed with having more power than others, rather than healthily …

Brighten things up with a new America

Sam Smith - Okay, we get it. Trump is mentally unstable, cruel, incompetent and dishonest. But if we only talk about Trump & Co, we will end up with a singularly depressive image of our land and its people. I know it's easy to do. Hell, I've been doing it myself, but increasingly I've been …

What the hell do we do now?

Since 1989, the Review has occasionally published a guide to getting through the crummy era that we are still in. To aid our readers get through these tough times, we offer another updated edition of our guide. Sam Smith, 2018 Face the facts: The First American Republic is over. The Constitution is being trashed by …

An alternative 9/11 report

Sam Smith, 2014 - It is now almost three years since the World Trade Center attack. During this period we have invaded two Muslim countries and moved far closer to the apartheid regime of Ariel Sharon. We have not taken a single important step to reduce hatred of the U.S., respond to justified complaints of …

Introduction to “Why Bother?’

Why Bother, in a wonderfully engaging and erudite manner, addresses the great question confronting democracy, community and justice -- and that is civic motivation. Prepare to be motivated. Sam Smith is an antidote to mindless speed reading. He makes you pause between paragraphs in order to mull over the captivating morsels he is placing in …

Notes on the end of the First American Republic

In 2003 I initially suggested that the First American Republic was over. Although the idea has gained credibility in some progressive circles, it remains unimaginable to traditional media, politicians and academics. Instead, there has been a bounce in talk of American “exceptionalism” even though when America was, in fact, exceptional it seldom used the term. …

Post-First American Republic update

Sam Smith As the Review has unfashionably suggested from time to time, the First American Republic ended in the 1980s. I put it like this in in a talk in 2004: We live in a nation hated abroad and frightened at home. A place in which we can reasonably refer to the American Republic in …

A historian’s view of now (written sometime in the future)

From our overstocked archives Sam Smith, 2012 - One good way to step away from the daily news and try to figure out what’s really going on is to imagine oneself as an historian returning to this time some decades hence. What might you see as having happened in the years since Reagan’s inauguration?  Here …

My bi-polar week

Sam Smith, February 2016 Earlier today my wife and I went to the funeral of a Maine farmer we’ve known for almost 50 years. Several of his grandchildren lived with us this past week as Charlie was winding down in hospice. Back in the 1940s and 50s, Charlie had become one of the first people …

America’s increasing proto-ISIS behavior

Sam Smith - If you step back from the ideological goals of ISIS, it is clear that its way of achieving these goals is what upsets decent folks the most, a presumption that if what you are seeking is considered godly, then you are entitled to achieve it anyway you want. We are horrified when …

Derivative America

Sam Smith, 2002 - The word from the Secretary of State that what this country really needs is "rebranding" provides further confirmation that America itself has become a derivative, a socio-political version of those financial instruments Roy Davis has described as having "no intrinsic value, but derive their value from something else . . . …