Democracy Archives - Page 36 of 57

Democracy

Biden Versus Trump: Whose Story of America Will Americans Choose?

“That’s not who we are” — or is it?

July 10, 2020 • by Rogers M. Smith

As Plato suggested in The Republic, politics is driven more by stories than facts. As different as they are in all other regards, America’s last two presidents both won wildly improbable electoral victories while telling completely contradictory stories about their country. Barack Obama made his own hopeful story a symbol of ...

Biden Versus Trump: Whose Story of America Will Americans Choose?

Democracy

Turkey’s Forged Success Story

Re-opening without closing down?

July 9, 2020 • by Nazan Bedirhanoglu

Erdoğan of Turkey was already equipped with extensive powers to exhibit his one-man-show. Even though the two years long post-putsch state of emergency formally ended in July 2018, most of the emergency regulations were codified in a way that essentially kept the country in a perpetual state of emergency well ...

Democracy

Gender Ideology as Pandemic

Anti-gender campaigns in a time of crisis

July 8, 2020 • by Elżbieta Korolczuk

We may have expected that a major health crisis would result in an easing of ultraconservatives efforts to limit the rights of women and minorities. The reality proved to be different. In March 2020 Polish Archbishop Wacław Depo claimed in an interview that “coronavirus is just one of many threats, ...

Democracy

Will We Still be American after Democracy Dies?

July 7, 2020 • by Johann Neem

There is a real possibility that American democracy will die come November. I hope not. I pray not. But I worry. Many scenarios that would have once appeared fantastic, now seem to be within the realm of the possible. One does not need a vivid imagination to wonder what would ...

Will We Still be American after Democracy Dies?

Climate & Ecology

Let’s Make Sure We Get the Green New Deal Right

Covid-19 will force us to rethink many of the assumptions underlying existing GND proposals

July 2, 2020 • by Marshall Auerback

Advocates of the Green New Deal (GND) are looking to change the way we handle a range of problems facing society, especially in the wake of environmental challenges occasioned by climate change. In response, policymakers have suggested a variety of programs designed to deal with these challenges. Should any of ...

Let’s Make Sure We Get the Green New Deal Right

Democracy

Pandemic as Opportunity?

The meaning of COVID-19 to the Polish LGBT movement

June 30, 2020 • by Pawel Knut

When discussing the Covid-19 outbreak, metaphors of crisis, stasis, or threat are often invoked to describe the atmosphere of the current moment. Such metaphors powerfully capture the situation of LGBT communities around the world that are particularly vulnerable to the economic and political effects of the pandemic. Sadly, some decision-makers, instead ...

Democracy

Donald Trump Will Get a Postage Stamp–If He Doesn’t Kill the USPS

June 29, 2020 • by Laura Goldblatt and Richard Handler

In a statement released on April 30, 2020, the United States Postal Service (USPS) outlined its COVID-19 policies. But this government agency, founded at the dawn of the republic, also used the pandemic to argue for its ongoing relevance. “We provide a vital public service that is a part of ...

Donald Trump Will Get a Postage Stamp–If He Doesn’t Kill the USPS

Democracy

Elections 2020

An interview with Jacek Kucharczyk about the upcoming Polish vote

June 26, 2020 • by Jacek Kucharczyk, Elzbieta Matynia and Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Professors Elzbieta Matynia and Jeffrey Goldfarb asked Dr. Jacek Kucharczyk, President of the Executive Board of the Institute of Public Affairs in Warsaw, to talk about the current situation, before the first round of voting. Jeffrey Goldfarb (JG): Jacek, it's great for the three of us to be getting together. I’ll ...

Democracy

Bernie’s Brooklyn

How growing up in a New Deal city shaped Bernie Sanders’s vision for America

June 24, 2020 • by Ted Hamm

One of the remarkable features of New York City in the middle three decades of the twentieth century was the plethora of political parties that wielded influence. There were the Democrats, still controlled by Tammany Hall in Manhattan along with similarly Irish-led machines in the Bronx and Brooklyn. The Republicans ...

Democracy

The U.S. Needs to Protect Free and Fair Elections

Here’s how

June 23, 2020 • by Katie Scofield

When eight states and Washington, D.C., all held elections facing the dual challenges of Covid-19 and demonstrations protesting anti-Black violence prompted -- this time -- by the killing of George Floyd, we learned that cumbersome voting systems have become more fragile than ever. Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, and Maryland were unable to ...

The U.S. Needs to Protect Free and Fair Elections

North America

What Would Good National Leadership Look Like Now?

How best to address America’s current crises

June 11, 2020 • by Desmond King and Rogers M. Smith

The United States is in the midst of three national crises: a public health crisis, an economic crisis, and a civil rights crisis provoked by racist police brutality and structural racism. Each demands national responses and leadership. Designed to prevent centralized tyranny, the American federal system has always had trouble marshaling a ...

What Would Good National Leadership Look Like Now?

Activism

Enough Is Enough

The power of violence and the power of non-violence

June 4, 2020 • by Jeremy Varon

Now everywhere quoted, Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1966 declaration that “a riot is the language of the unheard” serves as a thoughtful shorthand for understanding the jagged edge of today’s unrest. But even in Dr. King’s time, it was not particularly radical wisdom. In 1967, the Kerner Commission was tasked by ...