so my mother-in-law went out this morning and actually came home with a new york times. so i thought maybe we'd blog a bit. there's a hilarious review of three books about ann coulter: "soulless," "brainless," and, um, "i hate ann coulter." coulter, as heilbrunn points out, is hardly a political philosopher. but putting her up against the likes of susan estrich is just sad: estrich's zestless prose and ultra-conventional thinking are a pretty good contrast to coulter's whip-like provocations.
also there's a sort of interesting op-ed by alan ehrenhalt about the book "organization man."

If the “social ethic” really did dominate mid-’50s America — and there is plenty of evidence besides Whyte’s book to testify that it did — it was the last act in a long period of national cohesion. As the historian Warren Susman characterized it, Americans stuck together to fight the Depression; then to fight the Nazis; then simply because they were used to it; eventually they just got tired of sticking together. That is as succinct and persuasive an explanation of the social upheaval of the 1960s as I have ever heard.

"just got tired of sticking together" is not an explanation at all, much less a succinct and persuasive one. and here is the huge error: regarding the sixties as a time of "individualism." let me count the ways. first off, the various movements of the sixties were characterized by a pretty extreme uniformity of thought: people's minds changed, but the fact that their minds sought authorization from others didn't. if you don't think feminism or civil rights were conformist movements, consider the way they've tried to enforce conformity of thought on people by, among other things, controlling  the way we talk. second, the left basically advocated social transformations performed by gigantic state bureaucracies. of course, there were little anarchists and freaks here and there: abbie hoffman, for instance. mostly, though, it was just a new quest for consensus.