A vision of peace.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: EDITOR'S NOTE - Editorial

This issue of our magazine focuses on the threat of a rightwing takeover of Congress in November--and how progressives can respond.

It's not just at the ballot box, but also through longer-term progressive organizing, and by raising our voices, that we can push back against the worst aspects of our politics.

This is true not just in domestic politics, to which we devote most of our space in this issue, but also in foreign policy.

What a comedown this final phase of Obama's Presidency has been, since the first Inaugural when he declared, "We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.... Our power alone cannot protect us."

When George W. Bush and Dick Cheney took off over Washington in Marine One, and the crowd roared, their departure seemed to mark the end of a dark era: our disastrous military adventure in Iraq, waterboarding, domestic spying, mounting hatred of the United States abroad, and an endless, amorphous war on terror.

Now the neocons' nightmare has returned in a new form, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Horrifying YouTube videos show the beheadings of American journalists.

This sort of shocking violence provokes fear and anger--the enemies of rational thought and enlightened policy.

Republican politicians from John McCain to Paul Ryan barely skip a beat as they move from shock and revulsion at the news to blaming Obama--for drawing down U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, for failing to bomb more, send more weapons, keep more U.S. soldiers in the region.

There are no great options. But Obama, after stumbling by...