Democracy Archives - Page 29 of 56

Democracy

How to Suppress the Vote

One of the Constitution’s original provisions, delegating elections to the states, haunts us today

November 2, 2020 • by Jo Freeman

There has been a lot of talk in the last few months about vote suppression. Both Democrats and Republicans are accusing the other of an action that, we can all agree, is reprehensible. But vote suppression is nothing new. It has a long and (dis)honorable tradition reaching back to the founding ...

Democracy

The Showdown Between Democracy and Autocracy

Why the broad anti-Trump coalition must prepare for a post-election crisis

October 29, 2020 • by Claudia Koonz

Could democracy in the United States die? A number of troubling signs, such as Donald Trump’s refusal to endorse a peaceful transfer of power and his refusal to condemn white supremacists, lead many to worry about what has, until recently, been unthinkable. As a historian of Nazi Germany, I share this ...

Democracy

Five Lessons for Democracy From the Covid-19 Pandemic

An international evaluation of democracy in crisis

October 29, 2020 • by Jean-Paul Gagnon, Rikki J. Dean, Afsoun Afsahi, Emily Beausoleil and Selen A. Ercan

Who could have guessed, even one year ago, that America’s postal service would be central to the US Presidential Election? That political party conventions would become online events? Or that protests could be suppressed in the name of biosecurity and protesters could be fined for not wearing face masks? The COVID-19 ...

Democracy

The Thin Blue Line

The Trump campaign weaves evangelicals and the alt-right more tightly into the president’s increasingly fragile base

October 26, 2020 • by Heather Cox Richardson

------ Recognizing that he is losing the demographics he needs to win reelection, Trump has clearly decided that his best bet is to spur his base to turn out in vast numbers and vote. To that end, he has given up any pretense of appealing to voters outside his base. At ...

North America

After Trump

Towards democracy and social justice

October 23, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

That, of course, is the problem. And the problem is grave. In 2016, we were worried about what Trump’s victory might mean. Now we know that things have become much worse than most of us ever imagined, and not only for us in the United States. Trump has been a revolutionary—he ...

Democracy

Why We Need to Defeat White Supremacy at the Ballot Box

North Carolina shows what can happen when anti-Black racism goes mainstream

October 22, 2020 • by Robert Korstad and James Leloudis

Across the nation, white supremacists are growing bolder while our president expresses his approval. Though we have good reason to fear the Proud Boys and other modern-day incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan, we should not focus only on these militant and sometimes heavily armed fringe groups. In the United States, ...

Why We Need to Defeat White Supremacy at the Ballot Box

Democracy

Biden is Changing What ‘Bipartisan’ Means

GOP demands used to be the beginning of Democratic thinking

October 22, 2020 • by John Stoehr

I don’t get annoyed by politicians. Not usually. I understand they must say and do things normal people would never say and do. I don’t hold them to standards I’d normally hold normal people to. Dianne Feinstein, however, is an exception. The ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee used precious minutes ...

Biden is Changing What ‘Bipartisan’ Means

Democracy

Why Are There No Protestants on the Supreme Court?

Protecting the rights of religious minorities may propel some legal scholars to the top

October 22, 2020 • by Peter Rutland and Şener Aktürk

President Trump’s decision to nominate Amy Coney Barrett for the United States Supreme Court led some Republicans to complain about anti-Catholic bias. Democrats, they charged, were suggesting that Barrett’s Catholic faith could prevent her from making independent judicial decisions. Their evidence? Senator Dianne Feinstein, during Barrett’s earlier confirmation hearing, saying: ...

Why Are There No Protestants on the Supreme Court?

Democracy

Donald Trump Politicized the Federal Bureaucracy: The Next President Needs to Reverse That

How to rebuild our broken government

October 21, 2020 • by Yevgeny Shrago and Mariama Eversley

In an effort to mitigate the political damage from failing to contain the virus and manage its corollary crises, the White House recently mandated that the Department of Agriculture include a signed letter from Donald Trump inside food boxes, claiming credit for the federal program providing food to families in ...

Donald Trump Politicized the Federal Bureaucracy: The Next President Needs to Reverse That

Democracy

Court Packing

Past Present Podcast, Episode 251

October 20, 2020 • by Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: The Senate confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett have raised questions about the ethics of “court packing.” Neil recommended this Politico piece about the historical significance of FDR’s court packing. Natalia referenced Jamelle Bouie’s column defending the act, and Niki ...

Activism

Why Street Fighting Is No Way to Resist Fascism

The French left’s popular front strategy from the 1930s is a better way to resist the far right

October 15, 2020 • by Mitchell Abidor

It is almost futile to try to pinpoint the ideological underpinnings of antifa. Natasha Lennard in her writings speaks of Foucault and “microfascisms,” but in America, antifa groups seem to be inspired more by the anarchist Hakim Bey and his proposal to create “temporary autonomous zones.” Mark Bray, in ...

Why Street Fighting Is No Way to Resist Fascism

Democracy

Ghosts of Weimar

Is factual accuracy even the point when it comes to the discourse of antifascism?

October 15, 2020 • by Anton Shekhovtsov

Alexander Yanov, the emigré historian of Russia and Russian nationalism, was critical of major Western approaches towards post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s. He criticized the "devious simplicity" of the Western logic holding that, because a non-market Russia had been the West’s sworn enemy, a free-market Russia would become its partner. ...