North America

North America

When Politicians Make Nice

A conversation with sociologist Julia Sonnevend about her new book, Charm: How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics

September 11, 2024 • by and
When United States president Joe Biden stumbled on the debate stage on June 27, 2024, it wasn’t that he just seemed old, it was that a man who had charmed voters for half a century with his bright smile, kindness, and folksy quips seemed to have vanished. ...

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When Politicians Make Nice
North America

Project 2025 and Its Imaginative Hellscape

Apparently, Marxist elites have even compromised the fighting fiber of our troops

August 28, 2024 • by
Over the summer, I committed myself to reading the entirety of Project 2025, a policy document compiled by the Heritage Foundation, with contributions from many veterans of the Trump administration, which I printed out in four thick three-ring binders. What follows is a review of the vision of governance the ...
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Project 2025 and Its Imaginative Hellscape
North America

The Legacy of the Catholic New Right in Project 2025

The Heritage Foundation returns to its roots

August 26, 2024 • by
For the past four decades, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has published policy proposals ahead of presidential elections. The most recent installment of the “Mandate for Leadership” series, published in 2023, is a 900-page collection of essays written by a host of right-wing thinkers and advised by more ...
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The Legacy of the Catholic New Right in Project 2025
Democracy

“I’ve had enough”

When are we going to do something?

May 25, 2022 • by
Today, a gunman murdered at least 19 children and 2 adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.  For years now, after one massacre or another, I have written some version of the same article, explaining that the nation’s current gun free-for-all is not traditional but, rather, is a symptom of ...
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“I’ve had enough”
North America

The Future of the GOP

Has the Republic National Committee firmly dragged the Republican Party into Trump’s war on our democracy?

February 8, 2022 • by
Coming as the statement did, just after former President Trump said that Pence had the power to “overturn the election” and, that if reelected, Trump would pardon those who attacked the Capitol, it has put the Republican Party openly on the side of overturning our democracy....

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The Future of the GOP
Corporations

Let the People Decide What Counts as Public Goods

Why government spending should be defined by our democratic process, not by market forces

January 7, 2022 • by and
Public health is a public good, but the Trump administration handed it over to corporations. Shocking as this was, the Trump administration’s stance was simply an extension of what it had been doing since it came into office, and what politicians of all stripes have been doing for some fifty ...
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Let the People Decide What Counts as Public Goods
North America

Everything Associated with January 6 Is a Performance

Televised government hearings are political theater: make Americans watch by assembling a star-studded cast

January 6, 2022 • by
January 6 was broadcast on live TV, bringing the performativity of Trump partisans to many Americans who had never experienced their theatrical quality. The costumes, the flags, the signage, and the face-paint compelled and stunned many viewers....

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Everything Associated with January 6 Is a Performance
Democracy

The Blob and the Mob: On Grand Strategy and Social Change

In an excerpt from Rethinking American Grand Strategy, Beverly Gage examines how statecraft and social movements intersect

December 8, 2021 • by
Means and Ends As other essays in this collection demonstrate, the idea of “grand strategy” emerged out of the world of military affairs. Under the famous rubric identified by British historian B. H. Liddell Hart, “strategy” was what generals did, while “grand strategy” fell to politicians and statesmen, charged not only with winning ...
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The Blob and the Mob: On Grand Strategy and Social Change
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