Democracy Archives - Page 14 of 54

Democracy

Hannah Arendt: Insurrection and Constitutionalism

The democratic project is both unfinished and unstable

January 31, 2023 • by James Miller

Even though the post-war consensus over the meaning and value of specifically liberal democratic institutions seems more fragile than ever—polls show that trust in government experts and elected representatives has rarely been lower—democracy as furious dissent flourishes as rarely before, in vivid and vehement outbursts of anger at remote elites ...

Hannah Arendt: Insurrection and Constitutionalism

Democracy

Inventing and Implementing a World We Wish to Share

How John Dewey’s notion of social intelligence can remake contemporary politics

January 31, 2023 • by Deva Woodly

For Dewey, the notion of social intelligence is that human beings are able to shape and change the world through the understandings that they gain from the fund of human knowledge that exists: old ideas combined and related through the world as we experience it, and latched onto something new. ...

Inventing and Implementing a World We Wish to Share

Democracy

Frederick Douglass on Multiracial Democracy

On a universal right to migration and the ideal of “composite nationality”

January 30, 2023 • by Juliet Hooker

Douglass’s conception of multiracial democracy envisioned the political coexistence on egalitarian terms of individuals of “all races and creeds” as fellow citizens. He called for a “composite nationality” anchored in the idea of a universal human right to migration and the political legacy of the Americas as a multiracial continent. ...

Democracy

Alexis de Tocqueville on Democracy and Its Culture

The dangers of a new tyranny of a minority in our time

January 30, 2023 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

On the central problems of race, gender and sexuality, and class, Tocqueville is not the best of guides in considering today’s crisis of democracy in America. Nonetheless, I still think that Tocqueville has much to offer in understanding America and the present crisis in our democracy....

Alexis de Tocqueville on Democracy and Its Culture

Europe & Central Asia

The Art of Misunderstanding

On how to preserve one’s dignity while keeping the attention of western institutions

January 12, 2023 • by Kateryna Botanova

The idea that the purpose of culture is reconciliation confronts Ukrainian cultural activists with a dilemma: how to preserve one’s dignity while keeping the attention of western institutions? ...

Democracy

Can Art Reimagine Freedom of Speech?

Curators Carin Kuoni and Laura Raicovich discuss Studies into Darkness

November 1, 2022 • by Carin Kuoni, Laura Raicovich and Lindsey Scharold

Building up to the Trump presidency in the U.S. and, at the same time, coinciding with the rise of authoritarian regimes in democracies in Europe, Hungary, and Italy years prior to that, it seemed very important to look at the Right and its complete embrace of freedom of speech in ...

Activism

The Art of Contemplating Justice

An excerpt from Studies into Darkness: The Perils and Promise of Free Speech

November 1, 2022 • by Amar Kanwar

When you look at any crime, it is investigated by an agency, the police, or the criminal justice system of any society. The process of justice is based on an investigation that is in turn based on the collection of evidence. Only evidence defined as permissible by law is presented ...

Europe & Central Asia

Life on Earth: Repeating Myself about the Putin Revelation

It is time to rekindle the founders’ hope for the United Nations

October 26, 2022 • by James Carroll

It is time to rekindle the founders’ hope for the United Nations. Like ours can be, that hope first came in the form of determination to push back against the weaponized atom—that General Assembly call in 1946 to reject the nuclear bomb. The 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear ...

Life on Earth: Repeating Myself about the Putin Revelation

Europe & Central Asia

People’s War and Nuclear Fear: The Anti-War Left and Ukraine

A response to James Carroll’s reckoning with peace activism

October 26, 2022 • by Jeremy Varon

America was duty-bound to save Ukrainian lives, if at the expense of Ukraine’s sovereignty. But there is an uncomfortable arrogance to this argument, framed as tough love. Perhaps the Ukrainians themselves should determine what’s worth fighting and dying for, not the U.S....

People’s War and Nuclear Fear: The Anti-War Left and Ukraine

Europe & Central Asia

The Conscience of an Anti-War Activist

In praise of James Carroll

October 25, 2022 • by Randall Kennedy

Prior to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and threats of using nuclear weapons, I had pushed fear of nuclear annihilation to the very edges of my consciousness. James Carroll bids us to recall this fear, to bring it back to the center of our concerns, and to extinguish it through effective action....

Europe & Central Asia

Robert Jay Lifton on Psychic Numbing and the Warning from Ukraine

The renewed threat of nuclear war—and the importance of distinguishing between fear and anxiety

October 25, 2022 • by James Carroll and Robert Jay Lifton

Nuclear complacency is multifaceted. A certain amount of nuclear fear is appropriate to our situation. When we give in to what you’re calling nuclear complacency, it’s because we have insufficient fear of what is actually dangerous....

Robert Jay Lifton on Psychic Numbing and the Warning from Ukraine

Europe & Central Asia

Might the U.S. Military Support Nuclear Disarmament?

Its senior leadership is uniquely positioned in the present moment to pursue a revolutionary possibility

October 24, 2022 • by Robert Edwards

It is often difficult in the moment to recognize when one is at a crossroads. In the 1991 Gulf War, I was a lowly tactical intelligence officer in a parachute infantry regiment of the 82nd Airborne, rolling through the Iraqi desert beneath an air campaign that left smoldering charcoal where ...