Democracy Archives - Page 50 of 97

Feature

Fantasy Fatigue

A history without historical perspective

February 26, 2018 • by Tim Lacy

No one attending to post-2008 politics in the United States, or to the country’s cultural and social trends since, will deny the generic presence of ignorance, unreason, or irrationalism. By 2016 and 2017, word-of-the-year nominations included“post-truth”and “fake news,” respectively. Somehow Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts” did not make the cut for ...

Feature

Position of the Helsinki Committee in Poland

An open letter

February 20, 2018 • by Ewa Letowska

In the opinion of the Helsinki Committee in Poland, the two years since November 2015 have brought the greatest number of challenges and threats to human rights and freedoms of the entire post-1989 period. The Committee, as a civic initiative monitoring the violation of rights and fundamental freedoms since 1983, examines ...

Position of the Helsinki Committee in Poland

Blue Monday

Moanin’

On gun violence in the United States

February 19, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington There was another school shooting this past week. This one was at a high school in Parkland, Florida. A disgruntled and clearly disturbed 19-year-old former student arrived on school grounds with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, entered ...

Feature

Eminem vs. Trump

The political importance of the artist

February 18, 2018 • by Lisa Aslanian

I was in Chicago with my son, visiting colleges, and he was listening to the new Eminem album while he was working out in the hotel gym. He told me that he thought the album was great, but that he was not sure if he agreed with Eminem using his ...

Feature

I Love Compromise, But…

Compromise as a Democratic Necessity or as Democracy’s Corruption?

February 16, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Yet, I also know that there is a second meaning to the word compromise, that compromise can be understood as the abandonment of principle, often insuring the continuation of a pressing problem, even making matters worse. Think of the compromises about slavery leading up to the American Civil War. Compromise ...

Feature

Trump Has a Small Pence

Sexual metaphors have the power to turn old hierarchies inside out

February 13, 2018 • by Rachel Hope Cleves and Amanda Littauer

Over the weekend of January 20-21, throughout the United States and beyond its borders, millions of protesters gathered in self-proclaimed “Women’s Marches.” 200,000 in New York City. 500,000 in Los Angeles. At least 1,000 in Richmond, Virginia; Concord, New Hampshire; and Raleigh, North Carolina. And 300,000 in Chicago, more than ...

Blue Monday

The Sidewinder

Race, resistance, and the blues

February 12, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington In the past week I have thought often about “The Sidewinder.” “The Sidewinder” is a famous jazz standard written by the late, great trumpeter Lee Morgan, which appeared on his 1964 album of the same name. ...

Uncategorized

The Speaker’s Grovel

The constitutional role of the Speaker of the House

February 12, 2018 • by John Lawrence

We may not know how the ultimate budget impasse of 2018 will be resolved (the next shutdown deadline having been delayed six weeks). Nor do we know the resolution of the increasingly tense DACA dilemma – unnecessarily created by President Trump’s decision to rescind the broadly supported program. But as ...

Feature

Solidarity is Not a Liberal Value

Feminism and collective struggle

February 12, 2018 • by Bryant William Sculos

On January 20, 2018, at the end of the Pioneer Valley’s Women’s March in Northampton, Massachusetts hundreds stood gathered in front of the imposing, castle-like City Hall. We were children, women, and men, trans and non-gender conforming people. We were black, white, and brown, gay and straight. We were rich and poor ...

Feature

Loving a Military Parade and Clapping for the Great Leader

On Post Truth Authoritarianism and Resistance

February 9, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Donald Trump is truly a path breaking leader, opening new horizons for the American Republic. This week, he introduced into the American public life the idea of military parade in Washington D.C. and “joked” that those who do not clap for the great leader commit treason. Both truly unprecedented “advances,” ...

Loving a Military Parade and Clapping for the Great Leader

Feature

Self-Limitation and Democracy

On the Ability of Society to Self-Regulate

February 7, 2018 • by Yavor Tarinski

[F]or the impulse of mere appetite is slavery, while obedience to a self-prescribed law is liberty. Jean-Jacques Rousseau[1] The philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis has often been credited with saying that "democracy is the regime of self-limitation." [2] But since for him the only true democratic form is direct democracy, this claim might seem a bit ...

Feature

Top 5 Cities Where Older Workers’ Wages Fell and Younger Workers’ Wages Soared

January 2018 Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55

February 6, 2018 • by Teresa Ghilarducci

President Trump in his State of the Union address highlighted the country's falling unemployment and rising wages. This morning's Bureau of Labor Statistics' report of an unemployment rate of 3.0% for workers age 55 and older for the month of January, a decrease of 0.3 percentage points from December, does not contradict ...