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The Bernie Sanders campaign for President is one of the most exciting and hopeful developments in US politics in decades. Sanders is, and long has been, a man of principle — democratic socialist principle. He articulates a clear message — that a more genuine democratic politics in the United States needs to mobilize millions of people on behalf of an egalitarian political economic agenda — and he does so in a way that is both consistent and intelligent. He is always “on message,” because he has expressed this message for decades and he knows and believes in it, not because he is properly “handled.” His campaign has thus far succeeded beyond …

The Democratic Party Presidential primary is now heating up as a two-person race between two evenly matched candidates, both of whom declare themselves and not their adversary to be a “progressive.”

Bernie Sanders has declared that “You can be a moderate. You can be a progressive. But you cannot be a moderate and a progressive.”

Hillary Clinton has expressed amusement that Sanders considers himself the …

At the center of the battle for the Republican nomination is the Donald Trump phenomenon and the implausible advantage he carries in the polls despite the discriminatory, misinformed, insulting statements that have always marked his style — only now he launches them from the platform of a possible United States president, showing callous disregard. “We don’t have time for tone,” said Trump, when Jeb Bush called his statements divisive to the party and to society in the first Republican debate. 

One such infamous statement is Trump’s …

On Saturday, January 9, 2016, people in Poland and Poles around the world once again protested the actions of the incumbent government led by Prime Minister Beata Szydło, the parliamentary majority, and President Andrzej Duda. The current situation has already earned entries in both Polish and English Wikipedia under the term “constitutional crisis.” As presented in the international press, the crux of the current constitutional crisis in Poland …

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s racist and xenophobic stance is repugnant, of course. But exclusionary attitudes are common across the Republican Party and largely shared by its nominees. The 2016 primary debates are reflective of the GOP candidates’ minimal or non-existent capacity for what Arendt called “representative thinking,” which includes the ability to inhabit other …

The most striking architectural feature of the University of Texas at Austin is the tower that sits atop a hill at the center of campus. It is a twenty-seven story limestone monolith; a “toothpick” according to one detractor, more suited to the New Jersey cityscapes that inspired its architect, than to the landscaped grounds and rows of squat Italianate villas that radiate out from it. The tower is, in many respects, the focal …