Jonathan Scott

In assessing the political right’s performance over the last twenty years, different conclusions can be drawn. Based on the most basic facts, the right has failed in every area except one. This single success, however, as the right’s continuing dominance attests, is the most important in any struggle for political power: the steady production and…

Trapped up in the “white race” corral all the time, most Americans are not only oblivious to what’s happening in the world outside their own segregated block, but also, and for the same reason, prone to seeing everything in monoliths: good and evil; white and black; Arab and Jew; Christian and Muslim; the U.S. and…

For those interested in an alternative history of American slavery, the first installment of PBS’s new four-hour series, “Slavery and the Making of America” (February 9 and 16) began on a promising note. The first American bond-laborers, we are shown in vivid color and told by narrator Morgan Freeman, were a rather mixed group: English,…