Editor's Note

Long-time readers will notice a few changes in our design. The changes are subtle, but should make the magazine more easily navigable. But the biggest change this time around is not in layout but length: eight more pages to navigate. The added length is easily explained. We were faced with an embarrassment of editorial riches, and didn't want to postpone any of them.

Randy Forsberg's important article on the end of war drew an unexpectedly large and varied group of replies--from Congressman Ron Dellums to Edward Luttwak. Susan Okin wrote a powerful essay exploring the potential conflicts between feminism and the multiculturalist idea that minority groups should have special rights to control their own affairs. We knew Okin's essay would provoke readers; judging by the dozen wide-ranging and animated responses published here, the provocation has just begun.

Alan Stone's article on the film Waco: Rules of Engagement is longer than his usual work in these pages, but then Stone knows more about the government's standoff with the Branch Davidians than just about anybody. In 1993, he was called in by the Justice Department as an outside expert to assess FBI conduct at Waco; though Stone was highly and publicly critical of that conduct at the time, he now thinks his earlier reports may well have underestimated official wrongdoing. Finally, Allen Orr's examination of the latest intellectual fashion--the evolutionary explanation of reciprocity, cooperation, and human virtue--digs deep to find out why it may be . . . only the latest intellectual fashion.

So war and peace, equality and cultural autonomy, the abuse of official power, and how we humans got to be as good as we are--and that's only the larger articles in this issue. We could have saved some of the pieces for next time. But we have been advertising our wide intellectual range, and couldn't resist the opportunity to establish the truth of our own advertising.

--Joshua Cohen