Democracy Archives - Page 59 of 97

Politics

Why Trump’s Words Were Offensive

Myeshia Johnson confirms Trump’s comments as hurtful and disrespectful

October 23, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Central to all of this was Kelly’s assertion that Trump’s words about Sgt. La David Johnson, the fallen soldier -- “he knew what he was getting into when he signed up” -- were appropriate words, which Kelly himself had been told by General Mo Dunsford when his own son was ...

Feature

My Mother, Public Seminar, and Donald Trump, with an Assist from Red Foxx

The Life of the Mind Online

October 23, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Humor, especially of the most biting sort, is one way that we manage to live through dark times, both public and private.

Feature

Charlottesville, Thomas Jefferson, and America’s Fate

A response to Keval Bhatt

October 22, 2017 • by Michael Weinman

In a stirring, passionate, and bracingly clear recent contribution to the ongoing Charlottesville thread in our “Power and Crisis” vertical, University of Virginia student Keval Bhatt accounts for his decision to join others in shrouding the famous, indeed iconic, statue of Thomas Jefferson on the grounds of the University. I ...

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Before Charlottesville

An interview with Carolyn McAllaster on the Greensboro Massacre of 1979

October 21, 2017 • by Carolyn McAllaster

Carolyn McAllaster, the Colin W. Brown Clinical Professor of Law and director of the HIV/AIDS Policy Clinic, said the events in Charlottesville and the president’s response to them sparked memories of the Greensboro Massacre in which five protestors died and 11 were injured even before news of the apology broke. ...

Feature

John Kelly Is a Present Danger to the Republic

With all due respect

October 20, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Kelly spoke at length about the sacrifices of fallen soldiers, the duties of their military superiors, his own experiences as a commander and also as the father of a fallen soldier, and the advice he supposedly gave to Trump about how best to convey condolences to the families of fallen ...

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Neoliberal Horizons in Subjectivity

An excerpt from Jorge Alemán’s latest book

October 20, 2017 • by Jorge Alemán

It’s definitive to admit that when it comes to the symbolic order of language, in its distinct variants and modes of appearance, we must always distinguish two different dimensions. Firstly, we must indicate the “dependence and subordination” of the speaking being, with respect to the structural and ontological order of ...

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Act One of Turkey’s Post-1980 Political Drama

The mysterious clearing of Turkey’s political stage

October 20, 2017 • by Phyllis Jeffrey

Given this depiction of the present, it would be surprising to learn that AKP’s first electoral victory happened somewhat by accident. In the uncut version of the post-1980 Turkish political drama, AKP is the second of two acts. It is Act One, not Act Two, that made the party’s hegemony ...

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Jefferson’s Two Bodies

Memory, protest, and democracy at the University of Virginia and beyond

October 19, 2017 • by Isaac Ariail Reed

The students who shrouded Jefferson pulled the memory of the author of the Declaration of Independence — that document so useful to Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr., and so many others — into a larger series of conflicts over memorialization. These conflicts have tended focus on monuments to the ...

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Why I Welcome John McCain’s “Liberty Medal” Speech

McCain on the ‘meaning of American politics’

October 17, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

The Center is a bipartisan organization created by Congress to promote an appreciation for the U.S. Constitution. Its President and CEO is Jeffrey Rosen, a highly respected legal journalist. Its Chairman is Joseph Biden (previous chairs include Jeb Bush, Bill Clinton, and George H.W. Bush); its Executive Committee is chaired ...

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Subverting the Symbols of White Supremacy

The wolf and the fox

October 17, 2017 • by Keval Bhatt

Fascism had always seemed to me a thing of the past. It was almost like a fairy-tale I was told -- a passive deterrent, an unreal warning -- while going through school. But school was not my education; my real education occurred as I entered the fight against fascism in ...

Democracy

Political Narratives and Authoritarian Consolidation in Turkey

Telling a different story about July 15

October 16, 2017 • by Ates Altinordu

Although more than a year has passed since the event, many details about the planning and implementation of the coup remain unknown. The “confessions” released to the public seem heavily filtered by the government, and a parliamentary commission charged with investigating the coup attempt has curiously neglected to question key ...

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Normalizing the State of Emergency

France’s recent anti-terror legislation

October 12, 2017 • by Rafael Khachaturian

This measure codifies what has been an ongoing state of emergency, originally enacted by the Socialist President Francois Hollande in the wake of the attacks of November 2015. Since then, the state of emergency has been extended six more times in the face of ten more attacks, reinforcing what has ...