Democracy Archives - Page 23 of 56

Columnists

Our Nation Is a Shooting Gallery

But anyone who pretends there’s nothing we can do is lying

March 25, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ Yesterday I began to see the tweets, again: people who had left their houses that day to do something unremarkable were dying. Friends at the University of Colorado-Boulder expressed fear, horror, and confusion as another mass shooting unfolded at a supermarket near their campus. Later, I learned that ten people, ...

Democracy

As Biden Reverses GOP Policies, SCOTUS May Stand In the Way

An all-out legal attack by Republican attorneys general will be warmly welcomed by Trump appointees

March 25, 2021 • by Heather Cox Richardson

_____ As the Biden administration sets out to restore a government that can regulate business to level the playing field in the United States between workers and employers, address inequality, and combat climate change, Republicans are turning to the courts to stop him. Republican attorneys general have already launched a number of lawsuits ...

As Biden Reverses GOP Policies, SCOTUS May Stand In the Way

Democracy

Can The Republican Party Successfully Orbanify the U.S.?

Some comparative reflections on the exceptional vulnerability of American democracy

March 23, 2021 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

This past year the U.S. experienced a transfer of presidential power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. It was not a peaceful transfer of power. On January 6, a large and angry mob descended on the U.S. Capitol to “Stop the Steal” by obstructing the constitutionally mandated certification by Congress of the ...

Democracy

America’s Political Parties

The order shattering and the order affirming

March 17, 2021 • by Thomas Cobb

The oppositional leadership styles of Trump and Biden have proved the timelessness of the political scientist Stephen Skowronek’s position, outlined in the second chapter of his 1993 masterwork The Politics Presidents Make, that the American presidency displays competing instincts. Skowronek posited that the presidency contained the potential for “order shattering,” ...

Economy

Can Cooperatives Build Worker Power?

Give platform co-ops a seat at the policy table

March 11, 2021 • by Trebor Scholz, Doug O'Brien and Jason Spicer

If the American movement supporting Democratic Socialism gets traction, centrist Democrats are likely to push for cooperatives as a way to temper the severity of American capitalism. To that end, efforts like The Clean Slate for Worker Power project would do well to consider the potential of platform cooperatives ...

Democracy

Democracy and Social Justice

On the significance of C.T. Vivian and Adam Michnik

March 11, 2021 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

The New York Times, April 26, 1984: “A Polish Nobel laureate in exile stood in a church on lower Fifth Avenue yesterday and read an open letter of moral outrage from a jailed dissident in Poland to his jailer. The letter, as another speaker put it, fell like ''a tornado'' on the ...

Democracy

The United States Is Picking Up Where The Great Society Left Off

The conventional wisdom that endured for decades is making way for something new

March 11, 2021 • by John Stoehr

_____ You might be tired of me talking about the American Rescue Act, which passed the House of Representatives on March 10 and is headed to the President’s desk. But while the rest of the country is talking about Joe Biden’s dog, and while the press corps is asking about the ...

The United States Is Picking Up Where The Great Society Left Off

Democracy

Guo Wengui

Trump and the war on truth

March 4, 2021 • by Teng Biao

1. On the morning of December 1, 2020, I was at home teaching an online class for Hunter College students. The subject was how the Chinese government extended its suppression of freedom abroad. Suddenly, outside on the sidewalk in front of my house, a dozen or so masked people appeared, each ...

Democracy

On Treason: A Citizen’s Guide to the Law

An excerpt exploring the meaning of treason and the present-day prevalence of alleging treason

February 25, 2021 • by Carlton F.W. Larson

As a professor of American constitutional law and legal history, I regularly answer questions for the media about legal issues. But for the most part, those calls tended to focus on constitutional law more generally and on other subjects I have written about, such as the Second Amendment or the ...

On Treason: A Citizen’s Guide to the Law

Democracy

The United States Is in Recovery

What Texas, white supremacy and coronavirus can teach us about American history

February 18, 2021 • by Heather Cox Richardson

"In the exchange, Americans saw a president who cared, and a government that finally, after its previous leaders had told them to get out of a terrible catastrophe on their own, responded to their needs."...

Democracy

“Carl Schmitt’s Comeback?”

Understanding Trump and global authoritarianism

February 17, 2021 • by William E. Scheuerman

As the saying goes: “that was then, but this is now.” I had little inkling that Schmitt would soon become pertinent to present-day political developments. With the dramatic worldwide emergence of authoritarian populism, Schmitt’s thinking seems disturbingly relevant. As the Cambridge jurist Lars Vinx has correctly noted, Schmitt’s significance today ...

Activism

Black Swans No More!

When Things Fall Apart, a New Role for Community-Engaged Scholars

February 15, 2021 • by Trebor Scholz

As the pandemic has worn on, I have found myself devoting more and more of my time to conversations with researchers who have one foot in the world of alternative economies. I talked with dozens of Ph.D. students who self-identify as scholar-activists; they don’t want to stop at an analysis ...