America Archives - Public Seminar

Politics

What Are We Defending When We Defend Democracy?

The unruly role of modern social movements in testing the limits of political freedom

March 31, 2022 • by James Miller

I realized, as I wrote to Bill, “that it's quite unclear precisely what form of the American regime we are all ostensibly defending, at this juncture in history. Is it the current form as you describe it, which is so peculiarly open to popular pressure from the bottom up? What if ...

What Are We Defending When We Defend Democracy?

Politics

Individualism Vs. the Common Good in America

For all that Republicans insist that individualism is the heart of Americanism, in fact the history of federal protection of the common good began in the 1860s

August 30, 2021 • by Heather Cox Richardson

_____ America is in a watershed moment. Since the 1980s, the country has focused on individualism: the idea that the expansion of the federal government after the Depression in the 1930s created a form of collectivism that we must destroy by cutting taxes and slashing regulation to leave individuals free to ...

Individualism Vs. the Common Good in America

Feature

Sacha Baron Cohen, the Yoga Vote, and Middle Children

Past Present Episode 141

July 31, 2018 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Niki, Natalia, and Neil debate Sacha Baron Cohen’s new show, the viability of a “yoga vote,” and the demographic shift bringing about the disappearance of the middle child. Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: British prankster and social critic Sacha Baron Cohen ...

Sacha Baron Cohen, the Yoga Vote, and Middle Children

Feature

Allegories of America

American “Indians” and the British Imperial Imaginary

June 19, 2018 • by Robbie Richardson

I would like to discuss a statue in London which, like many things in London, is visible and yet generally unread, monument to a hazy or forgotten history: prominently placed in front of Christopher Wren’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, completed in 1711, is an 1886 replica of a statue of Queen ...