Democracy Archives - Page 31 of 97

Feature

“Will Modi Return?”

The Inevitable Question from the Indian Elections 2019

May 16, 2019 • by Sarbani Sharma

For at least a few months now, most Indians in their workplaces, homes and within their communities have been unwittingly discussing the inescapable context of the 2019 General Elections. At the time I write this article, the 17th General Elections are underway in India and six out of the seven ...

Feature

What Criminal Justice Reformers Can Learn from the Green New Deal

The political inequalities reinforced by American criminal law require a transformative approach

May 16, 2019 • by Seth Mayer

The decline of America’s democratic institutions has emerged as a central issue in contemporary American politics. In response to voter suppression, manipulation through campaign finance, and foreign interference in elections, Democrats have proposed sweeping reforms to improve electoral integrity and accountability. With the For the People Act, for example, legislators proposed to improve ballot access, ...

What Criminal Justice Reformers Can Learn from the Green New Deal

Feature

Ideology is Dead! Long Live Ideology!

On the Ideological Character of Liberalism & Socialism

May 14, 2019 • by Bryant William Sculos

Something in the Night is Dangerous According to Jeffrey Goldfarb, founder and publisher of Public Seminar (PS), I am dangerous. I threaten to undermine democracy. While Goldfarb’s comments may not have been specifically targeted at me, they are targeted at the kind of socialist critical theory and practice for which I often argue (for just ...

Blue Monday

How to Move Toward Impeachment, Now

A carefully orchestrated process could help strengthen the Democrats for 2020

May 13, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

The Trump administration continues to defy Congress and to demonstrate its contempt for constitutional democracy, refusing to share an unredacted copy of the Mueller Report with House committees, citing “executive privilege,” and refusing to comply with a number of lawful subpoenas for information, about counterintelligence, obstruction of justice, and tax ...

Feature

Trump’s Emergency Is Part Of A Theatrical Tradition — And Congress Plays A Starring Role

In America, emergencies are normal. Whether they are real or not doesn’t seem to matter.

May 10, 2019 • by Ian Zuckerman

We in the United States are living under a state of emergency. But that’s nothing new. President Trump recently declared an emergency on the U.S./Mexico border, explaining that this was the quickest way to access funds for border wall construction that Congress had refused to appropriate. Some weeks later, Congress passed a ...

Trump’s Emergency Is Part Of A Theatrical Tradition — And Congress Plays A Starring Role

Feature

Forming a New Polish Political Consciousness

Part Three: Confronting Polish Responsibility for the Shoah in Paris

May 8, 2019 • by Izabela Wagner

Editor’s note: in two prior essays on the challenges Polish scholars are confronting in their efforts to bring attention to Polish-responsibility for portions of the Shoah, Prof. Wagner discussed the origins of, and the historical and contemporary resistance to, the New Polish School of the History of the Shoah. In this ...

Forming a New Polish Political Consciousness

Blue Monday

Nancy Pelosi May Be Too Clever for Our Own Good

Why only unambiguous opposition to Trump can save us

May 6, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Last week a New York Times profile of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi reported that Pelosi wants the Democrats to “stay in the center,” insisting that for the party to succeed in 2020 it must “own the mainstream.” Pelosi, currently the most powerful Democrat in public office, has surely sought ...

Nancy Pelosi May Be Too Clever for Our Own Good

North America

The New “Infrastructure Deal” is a Political Disaster

Why legislative tacticians make bad political leaders

April 30, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

In the past 24 hours four things of direct political importance to the ongoing saga of the Trump Maladministration have occurred: (1) the Barr Justice Department, and the Trump administration more generally, has escalated its battle of wills with the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, refusing to comply with requests for ...

The New “Infrastructure Deal” is a Political Disaster

Blue Monday

On Trump’s Dangerous Words

Why We Need to Use the Word “Impeachment” Now

April 29, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

We humans are many things. One is that we are beings who understand, construct, and change our world in and through language. In the beginning there were words. The late great writer and dissident-citizen-president, Vaclav Havel, said it well in his powerful 1989 acceptance speech to the German Booksellers Association, “Words ...

North America

Toxic Language Alert for Campaign 2020

Confusing populism with demagoguery isn’t good for democracy

April 26, 2019 • by Robert Ivie

This essay was originally published on April 26 2016. In early April 2019, The Washington Post’s adversarial columnist Dana Milibank dubbed Bernie Sanders “the Donald Trump of the left,” noting perfunctorily at the end of his column that his wife, Anna Greenberg, “works for John Hickenlooper, a Democratic presidential candidate.” One can assume ...

Feature

Further Thoughts on Impeachment as Political Strategy

Do it to expose and weaken Trump and the Republicans for 2020

April 25, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

The argument about impeachment continues, as it should. Yesterday I laid out the general case for impeachment. My argument was not ethical or legal, it was political: impeachment is a legitimate constitutional process that ought to be pursued not because it will remove Trump from office -- Senate Republicans will surely ...

Further Thoughts on Impeachment as Political Strategy

Feature

For the Green New Deal / Against Ideology

Ideology looms as a threat to human decency, justice and survival

April 24, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Ideology doesn’t only undermine democracy, as I tried to demonstrate in my last post. It looms as a threat to human decency, justice and survival. I thought about this reading Jake Davis’s “Why I Want Nothing to do with the Green New Deal. Davis’s essay attracted a great deal of attention, with ...