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We praise democracy most of the time, but we practice it as if we had accepted every argument against it, as if we believed it must depress the level of culture and of public life

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Michael Maren

Michael Maren served in the Peace Corps and worked for Catholic Relief Services and the United States Agency for International Development. He spent nearly twenty years in Africa and the Middle East writing for The New York Times, The Village Voice, Newsweek, The New Republic, Harper’s and other magazines. He is the author of The Road to Hell: the ravaging effects of foreign aid and international charity (The Free Press, 1997).

Recent articles


America's two faces in Somalia

Is America its own biggest enemy? In the third of our Letters to Americans series, Harun Hassan, whose life was transformed by American intervention in Somalia, writes to Michael Maren, a journalist he befriended there.

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