Democracy Archives - Page 18 of 97

Democracy

White Liberals Must Face the Truth: Donald Trump Represents all Republicans

The GOP isn’t a deranged cult. It’s a party of dangerous politics

September 10, 2020 • by John Stoehr

----------------- Ezra Klein, a prominent white liberal, is the top editor at Vox. During August’s Republican National Convention, he tweeted something I think we should address head-on. “This isn’t a political party,” Klein said. “It’s a personality cult.” There are good reasons for making such a claim. The president’s most ardent supporters exhibit traits ...

White Liberals Must Face the Truth: Donald Trump Represents all Republicans

Democracy

Do They Deliver for You?

Postage stamps and the paradox of democracy

September 3, 2020 • by Laura Goldblatt and Richard Handler

Those were the good old days, right? Looking at those stamps from the perspective of our present public health crisis—when Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump crony who appears to be hamstringing the United States Postal Service (USPS) so that people will not be able to use the mail to ...

Democracy

Joe Biden’s Message of Healing

September 2, 2020 • by Robert Ivie

Joe Biden went to Pittsburgh on August 31 to make a campaign speech condemning the violence Donald Trump incites. That was the immediate reason for speaking out, but it was also an occasion to speak up for a better America, one that most citizens can affirm and from which no ...

Democracy

What We Can All Learn from the Lebanese

September 1, 2020 • by Roxana Toma

Lebanon has been crippled by long-running crises for decades. The country endured a devastating 15-year civil war and has often been caught in the crossfire of regional conflicts. In October 2019, people in at least 70 towns across Lebanon protested against government corruption, an incompetent political system, its austerity measures, ...

Politics

Covering SCOTUS in the Age of Trump

A conversation with Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick

August 27, 2020 • by Dahlia Lithwick and Claire Potter

Yet in the final days of the last session, Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by George W. Bush, voted with the liberal minority in two key cases. Philosophically committed to consensus-building, this is something Roberts has done at key moments since 2016, raising questions about whether he had taken Kennedy’s ...

Democracy

Fascism or Caesarism?

How Napoleon, not Hitler, exemplifies an enduring threat to modern democracies

August 27, 2020 • by David A. Bell

As a historian, my first reaction has been to answer the question with a resounding “no.” My professional training has led me to think of fascism as a specific historical phenomenon, largely limited to the period from the early 1920s to the end of World War II, and built around ...

Democracy

Now Is Not the Time to Polemicize Against A Broad Anti-Trump Coalition

August 21, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

The next three months will be crucial for the fate of democracy in the U.S. And the outcome of the November election will determine whether the American system of government can furnish even minimally decent and effective responses to the pressing challenges of COVID-19 and racial and economic injustice. As more ...

Democracy

Memory Politics in an Illiberal Regime

Hungary’s new Trianon memorial

August 20, 2020 • by Szabolcs László

As problematic monuments are being brought down in recent anti-racist protests around the world, Hungary, in contrast, saw the completion of a deeply flawed and tone-deaf memorial. Built for the centennial of the Trianon Peace Treaty, the “Memorial of National Unity” in front of the Hungarian Parliament has a minimalist style ...

Democracy

Is Some Version of Our Future Now Playing Out on the Streets of Minsk?

August 17, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

A contest over the legitimacy of an election and the illegitimacy of an autocrat is currently playing out on the streets of Minsk and throughout Belarus. I have no particular expertise about Belarus and nothing profound to say about this conflict. Belarus’s longtime President Alexander Lukashenko is a dictator who rose to ...

Is Some Version of Our Future Now Playing Out on the Streets of Minsk?

Democracy

Democracy “As If“

August 17, 2020 • by Dagmar Kusá

More than a century ago, Hans Vaihinger formulated his philosophy “as if” to describe our willing choice to live in a world of logical contradictions. As we cannot reach our ideals (e.g. a truly just society), we produce imperfect fictional explanations full of deliberate errors to fill in logical gaps ...

Democracy

Pandemic Politics

Reflections on the first appearance of the Biden – Harris team

August 16, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

“Kamala is killing it!” “The two speeches, of Biden and Harris, affectively expressed compassion and warmth, as they made sharp political points.” These were my Facebook responses to the coming out of the Biden – Harris team. Although I generally don’t use Facebook to express such judgments, I couldn’t constrain myself, struck as ...