Democracy Archives - Page 36 of 97

Feature

What Will it Take to Save the Children of Yemen?

A march of backpacks against bombs

November 29, 2018 • by Jeremy Varon

I sifted through the children’s backpacks laid at the Isaiah Wall, across from the United Nations, looking for one labeled with the name of an 11 year-old boy. That’s the age of my son, and carrying it would help me feel closer to the lives we were mourning. I found ...

What Will it Take to Save the Children of Yemen?

Feature

Chief Justice Roberts to the Rescue?

Or, how the relationships between conservative idealism and realism may serve the public good

November 23, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I wrote this last week, but almost as soon as I did, I had second thoughts. I read an early draft of Peter Dreier comprehensive, “What Should American Progressives Learn From the Mid-terms?” in which he thoroughly demonstrated the depth and breadth of the Democrats’ victory in the elections. Perhaps given the dimensions of ...

Feature

Making America Good Again

A few notes of thanks as Purple Wednesday closes a two-year run

November 21, 2018 • by Claire Potter

As I wrote that day, The message of The Poseidon Adventure was that we must not give in to despair, even in our darkest hour. In order to save our own lives, we must come to terms with, and fight back against, the new reality. The challenges faced by those on The Poseidon are ...

Feature

What Should American Progressives Learn from the Midterms?

Victories in Congress and at the state and local level could pave the way for a progressive groundswell in 2020

November 21, 2018 • by Peter Dreier

Politics is a struggle for power -- over ideas and interests -- and after this year’s midterm elections two things remain clear. First, voter suppression and intimidation, racism, and corporate money continue to infect American politics like a virus. Second, despite those obstacles, America is a much more progressive country ...

What Should American Progressives Learn from the Midterms?

Democracy

Not from the Left, Nor from the Center – But From Below

By mobilizing at the grassroots, Democrats successfully outflanked the GOP by crafting resistance into a coherent agenda

November 20, 2018 • by Sidney Tarrow

But these were only the most visible -- and the most national -- expressions of a wave of movements. Much of the energy that produced the Democratic victories of November 2018 rose up beneath the radar of the national press. As Lara Putnam and Theda Skocpol wrote in a New Republic article ...

Not from the Left, Nor from the Center – But From Below

Democracy

The Soviet Roots of Democratic Crisis in Latvia

As the country falls under populist rule is it a change — or an old story?

November 20, 2018 • by Maija Spurina

A New York Times article by Andrew Higgins paints a troubling picture of Latvia falling under populist rule. Higgins' concern is based on the results of the recent elections that makes possible a coalition between what he calls a "pro-Russian" and anti-establishment parties. Although his summary of the election results is accurate, ...

The Soviet Roots of Democratic Crisis in Latvia

Feature

No Shortage of Competition

Challenging Pelosi for leadership in the House

November 17, 2018 • by John Lawrence

A week after recapturing the majority, Democrats have a healthy competition for key leadership positions among a younger generation of House members. That election also quashed the major premise of malcontents insisting on the replacement of Nancy Pelosi as speaker: Democrats won despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent by ...

Democracy

Further Thoughts on Putting Liberal Democracy First

Why we need consensus on the democratic left to defend liberal institutions

November 16, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

I’ve been obsessively writing about the dangers of Trump and Trumpism for the past two years. This obsession has taken over my Facebook feed, originally intended as a way to showcase my band; has completely hijacked my first sabbatical leave in 20 years; has transformed me into a very active ...

Democracy

Politics, Pessimism, and Populism

We have lost the sense of the possible that social democracy injected into postwar liberal democracy

November 15, 2018 • by Sheri Berman

The rise of right-wing populism is probably the most pressing problem facing Europe today. Many analysts, including myself, have linked the rise of populism to the decline of the social democratic or center-left. Many traditional social democratic voters now vote populist; social democracy’s embrace of a “kinder, gentler” neoliberalism opened a policy “space” ...

Democracy

Not Knowing What We’ve Got Til It’s Gone

We need to both defend liberal democratic norms and institutions and address their fault lines

November 14, 2018 • by Leo Casey

In my contribution to the Dissent Magazine discussion of the “Crisis of Democracy” which provided the inspiration for our reflections in this symposium, I put forward the argument that attacks on the citizenship rights of racialized ‘others’ are central to Trumpism and other variants of the populist authoritarianism of the far right that have taken ...

Not Knowing What We’ve Got Til It’s Gone

Democracy

The Crisis of Democracy is a Crisis of the Left

A capitalism transformed by a strong version of social democracy should be our political goal

November 13, 2018 • by Michael Walzer

It is a crisis for democracy when the left is weak and unable to mobilize its natural constituency. All I want to do today is to unpack that sentence. Why is this a crisis? Democracy requires some degree of equality, but capitalism and neo-liberal economic policies produce inequality: a steady pressure ...

The Crisis of Democracy is a Crisis of the Left

Blue Monday

Help! Being #AgainstTrump is Not Easy

Charting the future of democratic politics in light of Tuesday’s elections

November 12, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Even by the frenetic standards of our extremely high speed society, the past week has been an eventful one in U.S. politics. On Tuesday a historic election broke records for voter turnout in a midterm election, returned the Democrats to control of the House and to the governorships of seven important states, ...