Ron McLean is a hangover from another era, an aging hippie who still does his hair in a graying pony-tail nearly a decade after he first carried placards and shouted slogans denouncing Japan's support for U.S. policy in Vietnam. For the past eight years of his existence in Japan, though, McLean waged a different kind of crusade—this one against an official ruling that finally forced him to leave the country and return to Hawaii to pursue his academic interest in classical Japanese music.

“The government of most countries is intended to protect the rights of the individual,” he said with the didactic air of one who has just discovered a basic truth. “In Japan it's to protect the government.” He was talking in the half light of one of those glittering little coffee shops that purvey a small cup for the equivalent of nearly two dollars and a piece of cake for twice as much.

The Third General Assembly of the Latin American Episcopate took place last February in the Mexican city of Puebla. Without doubt it will make a profound impact upon the evangelizing action of the Church in Latin America. The documents produced at Puebla, like those produced in Medellin ten years earlier, will give rise to reflections that will find their way into the diverse pastoral plans of each nation.

Neither Medellin nor Puebla can be considered isolated phenomenon. On the contrary, each should be seen as fruits of a maturing process in which Christian people, together with their pastors, express both the depths of their anguish and their high hopes and visions. That vision encompasses raising people from subhuman situations to a fuller experience of human life. Such experience should be expected to bring people together in brotherly love and lead naturally to a greater openness to God.

When the French were preparing for their legislative elections in spring ‘78 … when it looked like the Left could sneak past the Right and take over … Jacques Chirac set up offices in the only real skyscraper in Paris, the Tour Montparnasse.

He needed a lot of room, and he wanted everything new and modern. Women sat around tables opening letters, receipting contributions, stuffing printed speeches into envelopes. Men in grey suits moved from office to office at a pace that made one think there was something very urgent happening. Phones rang constantly. The walls were covered with photos and posters of Jacques Chirac. Pencil holders on desks were plastic cups with Chirac's picture. His name and face were everywhere. The scene was reminiscent of Richard Nixon's campaign headquarters in 1968. The only difference was that Nixon had the presidency at stake then and Chirac didn't… at least he wouldn't say he did.

History rarely gives civilizations a second chance. The record of Egypt, Greece, Rome, Mohenjo-Daro, the Incas, the Khmers, Spain, Turkey, Britain, and many other nations suggests that civilizational excellence is impermanent and, once lost, remains beyond resurrection. Of all these great societies China appeared the most enduring. For close to two thousand years, from the Han Dynasty at the turn of the Christian era to the early Ch'ing Dynasty about two hundred years ago, the Middle Kingdom was one of the best governed and most advanced countries on earth. Cultural and technological achievements combined to make China a superpower among states for a longer period than that experienced by any other major nation. Eventually, however, the norms of history prevailed. Foreign intrusion and internal confusion brought decline throughout the nineteenth century. By the time China entered the twentieth century the Confucian order had collapsed—its greatness an historic memory, its claim to empire a semantic fiction.

The Japan-America trade war, which our authorities are pressing on many fronts, is only part of a much broader offensive. There are skirmishes or battles going on all around the globe. The European Community claps restrictions or imposes “voluntary” restraint. Australia and New Zealand pound on the table and make threats. The ASEAN countries hint that it will be hard to cooperate while they suffer negative trade balances. The Third World countries whine that they would appreciate more Japanese development aid. And the Arab nations roar that Japan will go energy hungry if it doesn't help them build up their industry (and reverse its earlier policy on the Middle East).

From February to July, 1978, no one would confirm to Gumercindo Britez's mother that he was a prisoner in the Department of Investigations, but she knew. She returned to Paraguay from northern Argentina as soon as she heard; every day she sat in the Investigations waiting room, hoping some policeman would finally tell her, or that some other prisoner's relatives might have seen or heard of her son.

In contrast, it took Rafaela Laino only a few hours to obtain confirmation that her husband was at Investigations. Like every other wife and mother whose family members have been arrested, she went from one police station to another with a package of clothing, hoping that somewhere a policeman would accept it and thus formally acknowledge her husband's detention. But Rafaela's quest was different: Diplomats from three countries were also inquiring after Domingo Laino, a leader of Paraguay's largest opposition party.

What is the American system like? To our dismay we search in vain for one reliable book, or even one set of books, that describes the system within which we are now living, under whose workings we freely write and freely meet in public. (In most systems on earth scholars may not and do not work as we do.) There is no one book to place in the hands of a foreign friend and say: "Here is an accurate description of the way our nation works." There is no one book to place in the hands of a graduate student—a student disaffected, perhaps, from "the system." We have no Manifesto. We have no current Tocqueville. We lack a text that expresses our operative ideals and catches the meaning of our practices.

The Powers That Be is the transcript of a talkfest. One must imagine the raconteur among friends: The dinner was excellent, the drinks are plentiful, and the audience is sympathetic, eager to enjoy and to believe. Best of all, the storyteller has stories to tell. As he explains, he has spent five years cozing with the great and the near-the-great, mining stories comic and sad, racy and droll, but all touched by certified celebrity and therefore worthy of attention. Covering forty years of the movers and shakers, and the moved and shaken, in the communications media, the transcript is not unlike 770 closeprinted pages of People magazine. Pseudo-sophisticates who think themselves above that sort of thing ignore the fact that Halberstam's gossip is in the service of a very solemn thesis. That thesis, repeated frequently lest the drowsy miss it, is that the media, especially television, have revolutionized American politics and society. Indeed they have taken over.