Public Seminar Books Presents: A Conversation with Eric Alterman
Hosted by co-executive editor Claire Potter, the topic is politics and Alterman’s new book, “Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie -And Why Trump is Worse” (Basic Books, 2020)
If there’s one thing we know about Donald Trump, it’s that he lies. But he’s by no means the first president to do so. In Lying in State, Eric Alterman asks how we ended up with such a pathologically dishonest commander in chief, showing that, from early on, the United States ...
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From Mafia State to ”Parish” Republic
Slovakia is a rather unique case within post-1989 Central Europe as far as democratic transition is concerned. The lack of a tradition of statehood is the most evident difference between Slovaks and the other nations of Central Europe. It is necessary to keep this fact in mind when examining the ...
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We’re All in the Same Boat: A Democracy Seminar Update
As I wrote over two years ago, when our current group first began to take shape, this is the second iteration of the Democracy Seminar. The first was an exchange between critical democrats in the United States and Central Europe in the late nineteen eighties and early nineties. The contrast ...
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A Year of Boris Johnson
Only a handful of people would be mad enough to covet being prime minister at this particular point in British history, and one of them now inhabits Downing Street
Thursday saw the United Kingdom pass an important milestone: one year of life under the leadership of Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson. What was supposed to be a fascinating year of unpredictable political events has been rendered utterly dystopian through the COVID-19 crisis. Still, it’s worth looking back on what ...
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Mike Pompeo’s Originalist Foreign Policy
The Commission’s report gives ammunition to partisans who aim to weaken core constitutional protections within the United States
This justification is a pretext. While pretending to strengthen protection for human rights abroad, the Commission’s report gives ammunition to partisans who aim to weaken core constitutional protections within the United States.
Pompeo and the Commission’s report embrace an “originalist” vision of America’s founding. Originalism is a doctrine in constitutional law ...
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Securing the November U.S. Election
The urgent task for all democrats
“To support the Ins when things are going well; to support the Outs when they seem to be going badly, this, in spite of all that has been said about tweedledum and tweedledee, is the essence of popular government. Even the most intelligent large public of which we have any ...
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Rebirth of a Nation?
There is a dangerous method to Trump’s racist madness
Donald Trump is doubling down on his racism and xenophobia. This is widely acknowledged, and condemned, by many commentators. It is viewed, correctly in my judgment, as both a resort to the rhetoric with which Trump is most comfortable, racist and xenophobe that he is, and as a campaign strategy. ...
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Hong Kong: Pandemic, Protests, and Protecting “National” Security
The annual June 4 candlelight vigil in Hong Kong to commemorate those who died in the 1989 suppression of peaceful protests in China was canceled this year, although a few thousand citizens jumped the fences at Victoria Park to hold informal ceremonies. For the first time in three decades, the ...
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Should Governments Have Access to Our Data?
Privacy and democracy in the age of pandemics
Americans are scared about encroachments on their data privacy, and rightly so. Prior to 9/11, most advocated limiting the government’s ability to gather and access data in the name of civil liberties. Faced with the threat of terror, however, citizens resigned themselves to encroachments on privacy made in the name ...
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Poland Slouches On
After a noxious and underhanded campaign, Poland’s incumbent president, representing the country’s illiberal ruling party, has clinched a narrow re-election victory. That gives the government three more years to dismantle the country’s democracy.
WARSAW -- In the second round of Poland’s presidential election, incumbent Andrzej Duda narrowly defeated Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski. Though he carried just six provinces in eastern Poland, compared to Trzaskowski’s ten, and lost in medium and large cities, Duda’s support in villages and small towns was just enough to push him over the ...
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Why the Harper’s Letter Got It Wrong
The most serious threats to protest and open debate come not from the left or the right but from the state and powerful political institutions
So I took a new job in a new city and began again.
I have been thinking about my decision to speak up, and its costs, in light of The Letter. You know the one: the open letter in Harper’s magazine that praises the “needed reckoning” of the past few months ...
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