Politics Archives - Page 87 of 109

Democracy

What Are Iranians Dreaming about Today?

Reflections on the Islamic Revolution at 40

August 1, 2019 • by Kian Tajbakhsh

Introduction Almost 20 years ago, I published an article under the title “Political Decentralization and the Creation of Local Government in Iran: Consolidation or Transformation of the Theocratic State?” (Tajbakhsh 2000). The establishment of an elected local government in every city and village in Iran was the most significant institutional innovation ...

Democracy

For Democracy / Against Cynicism

On Trump, McConnell, Pelosi and Company

July 31, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

“I believe the single most pressing challenge facing American society today is widespread public cynicism.” With these words, I opened my book The Cynical Society, published in 1991. I was deeply concerned by the interaction between the cynicism of politicians, on the one hand, and the cynicism of the media ...

Politics

The New Prime Minister Versus History

How Boris Johnson misrepresented the United Kingdom’s past to present himself as its political heir

July 30, 2019 • by Alistair Somerville

What do Johnson’s methods of storytelling and the content of his tales tell us about the man and the prospects for his premiership? To many on this side of the Atlantic, he is simply an enigmatic buffoon — little more than a jumped up Trump mini-me with a plummier accent. ...

Europe & Central Asia

Hungary: How Liberty Can Be Lost

Tyrannies always collapse, but whether Hungarians will escape with their sanity and sufficient clarity for a new start remains to be seen

July 23, 2019 • by Agnes Heller

As the Bible (Exodus) teaches and, more recently, Hannah Arendt warns, liberation is not yet liberty. The institutions of liberty must first be constituted, and people need to learn how to make them work while breathing spirit into them. The years 1989–1991 were a time of liberation for all the people ...

Blue Monday

The Perils of Pelosi

I wish Pelosi would open up to her left colleagues, but it’s not likely to happen anytime soon

July 10, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Pelosi’s majority depends more on what happens in the presidential race than anything else. In 2016, the correlation between presidential votes and House votes was a near-perfect .97, higher than it had ever been before. That’s the reality of our polarized electorate, where every race is nationalized.To put it simply, if the ...

Blue Monday

The Perils of Pelosi

I wish Pelosi would open up to her left colleagues, but it’s not likely to happen anytime soon

July 10, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Pelosi’s majority depends more on what happens in the presidential race than anything else. In 2016, the correlation between presidential votes and House votes was a near-perfect .97, higher than it had ever been before. That’s the reality of our polarized electorate, where every race is nationalized.To put it simply, if the ...

Democracy

Why I Believe in Communicative Action: A Response to Geuss

Discursive democracy is a culture and a praxis rather than a matter of theory

July 8, 2019 • by Laura Nelson

Raymond Geuss begins his insightful yet occasionally misleading essay, “A Republic of Discussion,” with the following three questions, each an entry point into his critical account of Jürgen Habermas’s treatment of deliberative discourse in his Theory of Communicative Action and elsewhere. Here’s my gloss on them: “Is ‘discussion’ really so wonderful?” Occasionally yes, equally occasionally no. ...

North America

The America of Small Things

“A Song for You”*

July 8, 2019 • by Maria Bucur

But I love to celebrate all those things that make the United States the place I love. Most of those “things” are the people in their beautiful diversity, with their words, looks, and especially songs. My family and I spent a good part of the July 4th holiday week with dear ...

Democracy

Thoughts on Donald Trump, George Wallace, Frederick Douglass, and the Meaning of the Fourth of July

Only we can save ourselves

July 4, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Donald Trump has decided to make this year’s July Fourth his own, complete with a nationally televised address in front of the Lincoln Memorial backed by a display of military force. As the Washington Post reports, “plans by President Trump to reshape Washington’s Independence Day celebration now include an area ...

North America

IHOP to Psychosis

Having Your Pancake and Eating it Too

July 4, 2019 • by Evan Malater

So hapless was this attempted rebranding that IHOB quickly became IHOP in short order. One would have thought they had learned their lesson, but a new campaign emerged that amazingly doubled down on the losing strategy of the prior failed rebranding. Only this time IHOP confusingly teased the new campaign ...

Democracy

Defeating the Prince of the Darkness of Our Times

On the 2020 Election / Against Ideology

June 20, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I hope Elizabeth Warren will be the next President of the United States, though I would be satisfied with Joe Biden, and pleased with Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker or Jay Inslee, or with any one of the other sixteen or so candidates, none of whom has ...

Blue Monday

How Much Longer Can Pelosi Keep Fiddling While Constitutional Democracy Burns?

What we need now is a Democratic leadership that believes in democracy.

June 17, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

It has been two and a half years since Donald Trump first took his presidential wrecking ball to America’s very flawed system of constitutional democracy. It has been more than two and a half years since the Justice Department -- the FBI, the Special Counsel, lesser federal prosecutors -- first began ...