For Want of Wild Beasts

For many in Eastern Europe, prison was the hallmark of Communism. Today, the United States is experiencing its own carceral society. What can be learnt from this comparison and can we redefine the term “political prisoner”?

How do we understand both the uses and disadvantages of thinking across time and space? How do we negotiate the fact that in any biography or historical event, there are both elements that are unique, and elements that are universal? For me, these questions belonged to a larger question: namely, ...
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For Want of Wild Beasts

Reckoning with Deva Woodly’s Reckoning

What kind of coalition must the Left forge in order to defeat Trumpism and whatever comes after it?

Black Lives Matter was not born in the streets, even if it sometimes moved there following the police murder of Michael Brown in 2014, and again after the killing of George Floyd in 2020. But the movement, after these intense episodes of protest and direct action has not stayed in ...
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Reckoning with Deva Woodly’s <em>Reckoning</em>

Let the People Decide What Counts as Public Goods

Why government spending should be defined by our democratic process, not by market forces

Public health is a public good, but the Trump administration handed it over to corporations. Shocking as this was, the Trump administration’s stance was simply an extension of what it had been doing since it came into office, and what politicians of all stripes have been doing for some fifty ...
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Let the People Decide What Counts as Public Goods

Everything Associated with January 6 Is a Performance

Televised government hearings are political theater: make Americans watch by assembling a star-studded cast

January 6 was broadcast on live TV, bringing the performativity of Trump partisans to many Americans who had never experienced their theatrical quality. The costumes, the flags, the signage, and the face-paint compelled and stunned many viewers....

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Everything Associated with January 6 Is a Performance

The One-Year Anniversary of the January 6 Capitol Attack

Past Present Podcast, Episode 307

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: As we approach the one-year anniversary of the Capitol riots, pundits have reflected on how much of a turning point it was. Natalia referred to this Washington Post piece by Sam Tanenhaus and Kerry Howley’s New York profile of three ...
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The Best Books I Read in 2021

And why I liked them

It’s the most wonderful time of the year—buying books for other people that you want to read yourself! And on that note, here are the best ones I read last year. All links are to IndieBound to gently nudge you to buy from independent bookstores. Fiction It’s a tie between Douglas Stuart’s ...
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The Best Books I Read in 2021

Navigating the World of Grand Strategy with Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston

The two historians talk to Public Seminar about Rethinking American Grand Strategy

Award-winning historians Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston spoke (virtually) with Public Seminar editorial intern Gregory Coleman to discuss their new book Rethinking American Grand Strategy (Oxford University Press, 2021). Edited by Nichols and Preston with fellow historian Elizabeth Borgwardt, the collection of curated essays discusses what American grand strategy ...
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Navigating the World of Grand Strategy with Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston

Has the Press Corps Learned Nothing?

Journalism, when done right, should change a person

Members of the Washington press corps like to tell a story about the heroes of the Washington press corps “holding power to account.” This seems noble, and it can be, but more often than not, it’s not noble.  In practice, what “holding power to account” means is countering the dominance over ...
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Has the Press Corps Learned Nothing?

“Opportunity Zones” Are a Game Only the Rich Can Play

Too often they bring storage facilities and upscale college housing, but not economic prosperity

On SW Taylor Street in Portland, Oregon, there is a shiny new glass-and-steel building with a fireplace in its grand lobby. Developers got approval for the posh retail and office project in 2016 and, a year later, a local gas utility inked a 20-year lease to house its headquarters there. As it ...
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“Opportunity Zones” Are a Game Only the Rich Can Play

The Merits—and Risks—of Constitutional Politics

Further comments on the prospects for democratizing modern forms of government

Sanford Levinson: The participants in this symposium all join in desiring significant constitutional reform, focusing on the general rubric of “democratizing” what is now almost universally recognized to be an undemocratic political structure established by the Philadelphia Convention in 1787. As in 1787, when the mission was to supplant the “imbecilic” government ...
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The Merits—and Risks—of Constitutional Politics

The Decline and Fall of American Exceptionalism

Why the perception of the Constitution will inevitably be a central part of an extended process of political self-reckoning

It’s a fact that the United States is no longer the world’s pre-eminent superpower—a change that cannot help but transform America’s political conception of itself.  Its decline in relative power will of course take time. The dollar still rules, the military reach of the States is unequalled. But the US has ...
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The Decline and Fall of American Exceptionalism

The Moderates Have to Catch Up

In the fight over his agenda, Biden is making liberals the center

I continue to think regime change is a useful way of understanding politics. That’s the idea that American political history turns in cycles. For 40 or 50 years, one party and its ideas prevails over the other with a majority of voters. From the 1930s to the 1970s, it was ...
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The Moderates Have to Catch Up