Democracy Archives - Page 47 of 56

North America

Impeachment Must Be More Than Impeachment

Politics as Performance and Spectacle to Defeat Trumpism

November 8, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

If an avalanche felled the tree, does it make sense to focus only on the fallen tree and to ignore the broader and more terrifying cataclysm that caused it? House Democrats, apparently buoyed by last Tuesday’s election results, are prepared to begin the public hearing phase of their Trump impeachment inquiry. ...

North America

Wall Street Critiques of Progressive Democrats Ring Hollow

November 6, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

I’ll save you some time: it’s a nasty, polemical hit job on Elizabeth Warren. Its core claim is neatly summed up in its subtitle: Warren’s “big government plans would damage rather than improve our economy.” Rattner rehearses the conventional criticisms of Warren’s ambitious agenda, with special attention, of course, to ...

Democracy

The Right Terror Threatens Us All

A Call to Uncover Right Extremist Networks In Germany

November 6, 2019 • by Esther Dischereit and Irit Dekel

The murder, on Yom Kippur (October 10th, 2019), of two German citizens in Halle, one outside the synagogue that was the perpetrator’s initial target and another by a nearby Döner bistro, echoed other terror attacks on minorities. These are always described in the German media as acts of an individual ...

Democracy

Democrats of the World, Unite!

A Report on the First International Meeting of Democracy Seminar 2.0

October 31, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I proposed the seminar more than a year ago. Since then, we have been developing it here on Public Seminar, as I explained earlier this year. The organizers of this “worldwide network of democratic correspondence,” met for our first face-to-face meeting on October 4 and 5. We gathered in New York, at The New School, on the ...

Europe & Central Asia

Democracy in Poland?

From Authoritarian Populism to Populist Authoritarianism

October 30, 2019 • by Jacek Kucharczyk

The intensity and consistency of the PiS attack on democratic institutions came as a surprise to all but the harshest critics of the party. The experience of Kaczynski’s party’s first stint in government from 2005-2007 – when the authoritarian tendencies of PiS were effectively checked by the courts, independent media, ...

Democracy

Open Letter: We Stand with the Kurdish People of Syria!

October 29, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

We are writing as scholars and citizens of the world to express our concern for the Kurdish people of Syria, whose fate has been dramatically altered by events that started with a phone call between President Donald Trump and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on October 6, 2019. Since then, the United ...

Democracy

The Theater of Impeachment

An interview with Brenda Wineapple

October 29, 2019 • by Charlotte Slivka

BW: That’s a lot of questions! I had to have a sense of what the story was in order for the narrative could take shape. The entire book took six years to research and to write, but the story came to me after about two years into the research. In other ...

Democracy

In Her Own Way, She Lived as a Philosopher

Jurgen Habermas Remembers Agnes Heller

October 29, 2019 • by Jurgen Habermas

This year, when with a guilty conscience and much too late I congratulated her for her 90th birthday, Agnes Heller replied without a trace of hurt feelings: “Well wishes are never too late.” Death notices, however, always come too soon. To the very end, Agnes Heller was a person full ...

Democracy

The Impeachers

The Trial Of Andrew Johnson And The Dream Of A Just Nation

October 29, 2019 • by Brenda Wineapple

“Andrew Johnson was the queerest man who ever occupied the White House,” one of his colleagues remembered. As Lincoln’s Vice President, thrust into the presidency after Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson earned the hatred and opprobrium of most Republicans, particularly those members of Lincoln’s party in Congress who initially hoped that he ...

North America

Mayor Pete: Quit Scapegoating African-American Voters

Gay candidates are welcomed when they engage with voters — I was

October 28, 2019 • by Jim Neal

Whereas Buttigieg is the second openly gay candidate for the presidency in US history (after Fred Karger in 2012) I was the second openly gay candidate for the Senate in US history (after Ed Flanagan in 2000). Prior to 2007, I had never run for elective office: my political experience had principally been as a ...

History

The Syrian Crisis in Longer View

A review of Fragile Nation, Shattered Land

October 28, 2019 • by Spenser Rapone

Reviewed by Spenser R. Rapone The future of the Syrian Arab Republic, still embroiled in a brutal civil war, is today a topic of raging debate in the Middle East and beyond. Taking the long view, James A. Reilly’s Fragile Nation, Shattered Land: The Modern History of Syria recounts the origins ...

North America

“This is Our Campaign”

What The Bernie Sanders Campaign Means For Racial Justice

October 25, 2019 • by Mat Cusick

Before a sold-out audience of about 200 attendees of a broad spectrum of age, race, and background, and over 10,000 viewers watching online by livestream, these three black women attempted to clarify why Bernie Sanders -- the 78-year-old white man who has served for nearly three decades as a national ...