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Logos was founded in the shadow of September 11, 2001, when the new millennium had barely begun. It was conceived as a journal, but also as part of a larger political and cultural project. A palpable chill had already pervaded the cultural climate. Neoconservatism was becoming the intellectual fashion, and a new preoccupation with world hegemony was defining American politics. That situation has only grown worse. The aftermath of 9/11 has witnessed the rise of religious traditionalism, exaggerated nationalism, and America’s withdrawal from the global discourse even as the world is becoming increasingly interdependent. The mass media as well as the classic organs of public debate made little room for a critical perspective in the wake of 9/11 and the subsequent global war on terror. Radical voices, even now, can barely be heard. Logos was launched to intervene in this state of affairs. Its express purpose is to resurrect eroding democratic principles, concerns with social justice, and the broad-minded cosmopolitanism originally associated with the Enlightenment and then with the great progressive movements of modernity. Weary of hyperintellectualized professional journals, suspicious of the anti-intellectual bias of many publications seeking to engage a “broader public,” Logos seeks to create a new public, one oriented toward critical reflection and political and social praxis. Our intent was to chart a new course in a responsible, intellectual manner. Both new and established writers from around the world would engage in a collective project of critique and political reconstruction on a global scale, bringing fresh ideas to pertinent issues. Logos fosters what we like to call a rational radicalism, an interdisciplinary perspective, and a commitment to critique with a positive political purpose. No less than the language of the vernacular or the attempt to move outside narrow disciplinary boundaries, such an enterprise has always been associated with the ethical imperative of confronting asymmetrical relations of power. Our journal is therefore engaged in a distinctly public enterprise. It is intent on dealing with trends deriving from the end of the cold war that have only now begun to yield their fruit, a new freedom for the market that is redistributing income upward in so many nations, and the way in which what was once called the “end of history” has given way to new forms of regional and global conflict. No less than democracy or cosmopolitanism, therefore, an unfashionable socialist impulse also informs our enterprise. And so, if Logos is primarily the offspring of a reaction against narrow intellectualism and rank populism, it is also grounded in a radical engagement with INTRODUCTION 1 the contemporary public sphere, domestically and globally. That should become apparent in our choice of the best political articles published by Logos during the first three years of its existence. It should also be evident from these articles that the editorial ethos of Logos, though obviously a journal of the Left, is free of any narrow ideological agenda and demands no particular form of analysis. Too many liberal and left-wing journals and magazines have allowed ideology to trump the critical faculty and pervert political and ethical judgment. Such a strategy, we believe, has alienated more readers than it has enlightened or engaged. Again, however, Logos is not simply a response to a crisis of theory . It is, above all, a project to intervene in a historical conjuncture that has left everyday people of good faith disorientated. The turn toward religion and a new provincialism, possessive individualism, and an anachronistic notion of capitalism, imperialism, and nationalism, is real. Logos is explicit in its support for secularism and science, solidarity with the dispossessed, and mitigating the whip of the market, no less than realizing an ethics of human dignity and the moral precepts of universalism. America and its brand of culture, politics, and economics are continuing to drive this kind of Enlightenment project—both domestically and globally— into the ground: its culture industry is privileging the lowest common denominator ; its economic values are degrading any meaningful notions of citizenship; its new obsession with “security” is constricting civil liberties; and its foreign policy is driving whole regions toward chaos. The articles collected in this volume not only intervene in the crucial political issues and debates of our time but also probe deeper, more enduring themes. The six parts represent the various concerns that have occupied Logos for the past three years. Part I, “Whither America?” examines the current state of American politics and society. Stephen Eric Bronner examines the “distortion of...

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