Watching Big Brother
by William I. Lengeman III
(previously unpublished)
George Orwell may still be vindicated, but let's hope that he's not. Those of us who remember 1984 may recall that the year came and went and things didn't much resemble the fictional world of Orwell's seminal novel of a nightmarish totalitarian future.
The Myth of Progress
Humanist
"Progress is the process whereby the human race is getting rid of whiskers, the veriform appendix, and God." --H. L. Mencken
Throughout much of 1995 we were bombarded with a hailstorm of news reports clueing us in to what a wonderful thing progress is. High technology, most notably in the form of the Internet, is poised to usher us into a brave new twenty-first-century world of wondrous global interconnectedness. Or at least that's the impression given by all of the breathless accounts touting it as the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Miranda: The Story of America’s Right To Remain Silent
by Gary L. Stuart
Z Magazine
Watch enough cop shows and you’ll probably end up memorizing that old familiar litany, the one that begins, “You have the right to remain silent.” Watch cop shows long enough and you may even pick up on the fact that this recitation is known as a Miranda warning. What you aren’t likely to find out from watching cop shows is who Miranda was or how it came to be that criminal suspects are “Mirandized”—or read a statement explaining their rights.
School Commercialism: From Democratic Ideal to Market Commodity
by Alex Molnar
Z Magazine
The first thing you notice about Alex Molnar’s School Commercialism is how slim it is—six short chapters. Brief as it may be, Molnar’s book is nonetheless a sobering examination of how our schools have been transformed into “a consumer marketplace.”
