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Article: Public interest lost?(Essay)
- Article from:
- Daedalus
- Article date:
- September 22, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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When the editors of Daedalus invited me, along with several others, to write an essay on the subject of the public interest, I will admit I had some qualms. For many years I edited a journal with Nathan Glazer and Irving Kristol by that very name, and so it was not wholly unfamiliar terrain. Yet what would be the result, I wondered, of asking intellectuals, of all people, to write on the subject--and in particular of asking them whether the thing even exists? Was that not inviting the fox to guard the henhouse? To the average American the idea of the public interest is, I suspect, perfectly sensible; and I also sus pect that without such a notion politicians and government ...