Geoffrey Kurtz, Author at Public Seminar

Toward a Postliberal Future?

Patrick J. Deneen’s Regime Change and the Meletus option

May 16, 2023 • by Geoffrey Kurtz

Deneen invokes Machiavelli, but at a deeper level his model is Meletus: the whole class of “ordinary people,” all of them, have the right political instincts, and only the liberal “ruling elite,” like the deplorable Socrates, is corrupting the American polity....

Keeping the Left Alive: Michael Walzer’s Political Action Reissued

If any book can help left-wing activists figure out how not to burn out, this is probably it

October 22, 2019 • by Geoffrey Kurtz

That hopeful and interesting work is the subject of Walzer’s book Political Action: A Practical Guide to Movement Politics. Originally published in the spring of 1971 and reissued this year by New York Review Books, Political Action is in a genre by itself. Like an organizing manual but more thoughtful and suggestive, like ...

Can There Be Dignity In A Vast Majority?

Democrats have the votes. Now we need to listen to each other.

December 27, 2018 • by Geoffrey Kurtz

What if the Democratic Party now has the support of the majority of American citizens? Certainly Democrats did well in the 2018 elections. More revealing than the tally of races won is the fact that Democrats received majorities of the overall votes cast for Senate candidates, for House candidates, and for gubernatorial candidates. In the House elections, Democrats ...