In the podiatrist's waiting room the other day I came across a Newsweek column by George F. Will (F for Fuddy-duddy, I've always supposed). An unexpected glimpse of the woe haunting his heart made me understand the ethos of right-wing diehards in a new light.

He was blasting the...

Recently in New York I went to a preview performance of a rarely staged piece of music theater called "The Damnation of Faust," by Hector Berlioz. In his introduction, the manager of the opera house jested about the relevance of the subject to the current economic crisis, and the audience...

The oft-prophesied collapse of capitalism is looming over our world's daily supply of goods. The global economic system is on the ropes and must not be allowed to fail. So proclaims government, financial marketeers, tottering czars of industry, media mandarins, and just about everybody else who can pay to be...

At the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, an Australian observer wrote this letter to the Sydney Morning Herald: "Thank God we got the convicts and they got the Puritans."

For me, the legacy of the Sixties has been my journey from Puritan to convict, or at least renegade. When...