Links I Like

The Ethical Spectacle
NRA
ACLU
Fascinating Video Lecture
International Journal
    of Occupational and
    Environmental Health
Students for Concealed
     Carry on Campus

Book Review:
“The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor — The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi” This is a fascinating book about a labor leader who has had tremendous influence on our lives, but whose name is not even known by millions of Americans. Please read my review.

Unions

My Writings

The Decline of Unions – Why?

Steelabor Article

In the Spring of 2005 I was asked by the United Steelworkers Union to write an article for the union’s magazine, Steelabor. The subject was to be the way copper-mining giant Asarco was treating its retirees, as well as its current employees, whose labor contract was nearing expiration. The article appeared in the Spring, 2005, issue. More …

Discussion in the AFL-CIO

What Course for Labor, Proposal Submitted to the Discussion in the AFL-CIO, Feb. 6, 2005

Writings on the Second Amendment

The Ethical Spectacle

District of Columbia v.  Heller — A very, very important case before the U.S. Supreme Court in the spring of 2008.

Sorry, Nothing Personal — Campus- and shopping mall-type massacres.

Various Firearms Issues – This interesting Web magazine devoted the September, 1996, issue to the subject of gun control, as it did for much of the March, 1995, issue. The publisher had earlier written a number of articles on the subject and graciously allowed me to contribute rebuttals to all of them. They appeared in that September, 1996, issue, along with further articles by the publisher and other contributors.

The Second Amendment Ten Years Later – This is a follow-up to the 1996 articles.

Misdirected Journalism – Vice President shot a friend in a hunting accident. It resulted from an unforgivable violation of the rules of gun safety. Otherwise, it was making a mountain out of a mole hill to score political points.

Letters to the Editor

A Letter to the ACLU About Its Second Amendment Policy

A Letter to the Editor of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, May 28, 1997

Writings on Other Issues

Articles in my Blog

 Book Review: “The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor — The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi”, in the February, 2008, issue of The Ethical Spectacle

A Proposal to Change the Death Penalty, in the December, 1997, issue of The Ethical Spectacle

The Election of 2004, in the January, 2005, issue of The Ethical Spectacle

The Soviet Union

Why is this material here? The USSR is gone. The Communist Party isn’t running Russia any more. What’s the point of reading this stuff now? The reason is to understand. Except for a few scholars, most people in the US never knew much about the USSR. Even most scholars were so caught up in the Cold War that their bias clouded their judgment, so they never really understood it, either, and they were the ones on whom the rest relied for information about the Soviet Union. Between that and the constant barrage of anti-Soviet propaganda aimed at the population in this country, continued today by media idiots without a clue glibly throwing off comments about the West having won the Cold War and Communism being dead, it’s no wonder that most folks don’t really have a sense of what really happened there. They just know a few horror stories, and don’t think that there is anything else worth knowing.

Despite those circumstances, there developed a new layer of scholars who were more interested in gaining an understanding of Soviet history and culture, instead of doing research mostly to beef up arguments that the Soviet Union was an evil empire. Their much more objective and honest studies of the USSR has brought out much new information about  the Soviet period.

Still, why should people bother trying to understand Soviet history, unless they have a special curiosity about it? For one thing, one can’t really understand the United States without understanding the USSR. The two countries’ interactions shaped each other, and the legacies of those interactions will be with us for a long time. For another thing, how can one try to make a better world for the future without understanding the events that formed the present? How can we avoids the mistakes of the past if we don’t understand them? And how can we build upon the successes of the past without understanding them, too?

One last point: if you are expecting an apology for Stalinism or for the terrible things while it was in control of the Soviet Union, relax.  You won’t find it here. Neither will you find an any attempts to artificially blacken or whiten things in the USSR. If you are used to the usual dark, bleak images of a USSR under the totalitarian control of evil people, that are nearly the only thing one encounters in the West, you might find some of this jarring. Instead of trying to emphasize the negative, the attempt here is to show things in their real perspectives, the good along with the bad.

Academic Papers

These research papers were written as part of an undergraduate major in Soviet Studies at Brown University, from September, 1984, through June, 1986, when I returned to Brown after a thirteen year absence to complete an undergraduate degree. The major, formally in the Slavic Department, was created by me, mixing language studies, political science and history courses, and independent studies.

An Overview of the Soviet Economy

Dancing Cheek To Cheek – The Relationship of the Bolshevik Party to the Working Class In Early Revolutionary Russia

True Communists Such As I – A Discussion of the Party Loyalty After Great Trial of Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg

Dmitri Shostakovich, Politics, and Modern Music

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Last Updated — March 23, 2008