Politics Archives - Page 67 of 143

Blue Monday

Getting Millennials to the Polls

An Extra-Credit Assignment on Voting and Citizenship

October 15, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

As commentators across the political spectrum agree, the upcoming U.S. elections on Election Day, November 6, are very important in determining the future of American democracy. Readers of this column know that the only filter on my political opinions is the filter of language itself. I say what I think. I ...

Feature

Plastics and Fossil Fuels

Follow the History of Technological Systems

October 13, 2018 • by Simon Pirani

Plastics have a history too. David Attenborough’s magnificent Blue Planet II TV series, which last year jolted public anger over plastic waste in the oceans, focused attention on a bunch of materials that hardly existed a century ago. Output of plastics has mushroomed since the mid twentieth century, on the back ...

Democracy

The Radical Center as a Utopian Project?

7 notes on the ideal of a free, intelligent and consequential public life

October 12, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

1. From a critical point of view, “the center” is the ground of the wishy washy: too attached to the ways things are to commit to the radical change of the left, not sufficiently informed by the wisdom of customs and traditional values to fully embrace the good of the ...

The Radical Center as a Utopian Project?

Feature

Space Race Remixed

The mythical war between capitalisms

October 9, 2018 • by Sarah Murphy

For centuries we have tried to unravel the mysteries of the universe and images have been vital to that unravelling. At different points in history the moon has been held responsible for insanity, fertility, and even home to alien life. But mostly, these celestial bodies have remained a mere twinkling in ...

Blue Monday

Courts, Kavanaugh, and Constitutional Hardball

October 8, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

On November 22, 1895 Eugene V. Debs stepped outside of the Woodstock Jail in Chicago, where he had been imprisoned for six months. Debs, the President of the American Railway Union, had been one of the leaders of the Pullman Strike of 1894, considered by many to be the first ...

Courts, Kavanaugh, and Constitutional Hardball

Democracy

The Legitimacy of the Supreme Court?

The system is working and that is the problem

October 8, 2018 • by Ajay Singh Chaudhary

We Americans are “constitutional fetishists” in the apt phrase of the lesser-known mid-20th century critical theorist of law and economy, Franz Neumann. We tend to think that a particular order of state institutions -- for example, our current incarnation of the separation-of-powers -- embodies the essence of democracy instead of looking ...

Feature

“1933,” or What Hitler’s Ascendency Teaches Us About Authoritarianism

10 Historic Lessons for the Age of Trump

October 8, 2018 • by Jürgen von Mahs

2018 marks the 85th anniversary of the birth of the perhaps the most strident authoritarian regime in Western history: Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler’s rise to power makes this year a good occasion to reflect on the lessons that can be learned from the fateful series of events that unfolded in Germany ...

“1933,” or What Hitler’s Ascendency Teaches Us About Authoritarianism

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Picking Less Partisan Candidates

Boosting election participation is tricky, but there are easy ways to reform to produce candidates who reflect a broader swath of voter sentiment

October 6, 2018 • by John Lawrence

September is over, and with it summer, Labor Day, the celebration of National Potato Month… and the 2018 primary election season. Just two month before the November election that could decide the nation’s political course for the next two years, candidates have finally been selected in a process that began in some ...

Democracy

Defending “Open” Democracy

What would an open democracy based on different forms of non-electoral yet democratic representation look like?

October 5, 2018 • by Hélène Landemore

Democracy is in trouble, or so we are told. In this essay I argue that the crisis of democracy as we know it -- which has come to be symbolized by Trump or Brexit -- is a sign of its vitality as a normative ideal. People the Western world over ...

Uncategorized

A Minor National Disgrace

A New Low for David Brooks, Self-Important Windbag

October 5, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

David Brooks long ago appointed himself the moral scold and philosopher kinglet of American society. For years he has pontificated about the importance of “moderation” and “epistemic humility” and the dangers of “incivility.” Without any sense of irony or performative contradiction, this pseudo-philosophic prepster has lectured intellectuals, most of whom ...

Feature

Protesting Kavanaugh

Hundreds of women, plus a few men, arrested protesting Kavanaugh confirmation

October 5, 2018 • by Jo Freeman

The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court stretched out for the month of September as the Hart Senate Office Building was repeatedly occupied by protesters. Led by the Center for Popular Democracy but mobilized by several different groups, the protesters were overwhelmingly female, ...

Democracy

Let’s Keep Democracy

But let’s look for better alternatives

October 5, 2018 • by Jason Brennan

The BMW 3-series is wonderful, often the best in its class, but it nevertheless has significant flaws. BMW’s engineers acknowledge its shortcomings and continually attempt to improve it. Consumers love the car, but also recognize in a given year that competitors may be better, and often buy the competitors instead. ...