democracy 
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SOURCE: Washington Post
3/23/2023
Civics Education is at Rock Bottom. We Can Raise it Back Up
by Danielle Allen
Both disinvestment in the civics curriculum and political fights over what to teach mean that US children learn little about the democratic process at all. A new project aims to rebuild consensus about the need for civics and lay out guiding principles.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
4/17/2023
Will a Grassroots Movement Remake Tennessee—Again?
by Ansley L. Quiros and Anthony C. Siracusa
This month's events in the state capitol, culminating in the expulsion of two House members after a raucous gun control protest, recalls Nashville's role as a center in the Black Freedom movement.
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SOURCE: Boston Review
3/27/2023
David Allen: What Happened to Democracy in Foreign Policy?
by Daniel Bessner
The idea that ordinary Americans should have a say in the nation's role in the world is dismissed out of hand by the foreign policy elite. But what if the problem isn't the complexity of world affairs, but the American elite's rejection of democracy?
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SOURCE: Commonweal
3/28/2023
James Kloppenberg Reviews New Books on Democracy and Polarization
The eminent political historian reviews books by Timothy Shenk, Michael Kazin, Julian Zelizer, Gary Gerstle, Jefferson Cowie and Sam Rosenfeld that place the current concern with polarization in decades- and centuries-long perspective.
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1/22/2023
The US is a Procedural, Not a Substantive, Democracy
by Van Gosse
"The United States is well on its way to becoming a strictly procedural democracy, wherein legal and constitutional norms are observed, but the core requirements for democratic decision-making—the rule of the majority, the right of all citizens to vote without hindrance—are ignored."
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SOURCE: The Progressive
1/3/2023
Despite Aggressive Rebrand, Charles Koch is Still Fighting Against Democracy
by Nancy MacLean and Lisa Graves
The media have latched on to Charles Koch's recent expressions of regret over partisanship. But this is a rebranding, not a redirection.
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SOURCE: Nieman Lab
1/10/2023
The Good News and the Bad News about (Mis)Information – Historians Included
Recent studies of media consumption and conspiracy theory adherence suggest misinformation is not terribly influential on political behavior. Unfortunately, neither is mythbusting, given the social and cognitive complexity of belief.
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SOURCE: L.A. Progressive
12/26/2022
Conflicting Values Explain Political Differences
by Walter G. Moss
From climate to war, differences in basic values are expressed in political conflict.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
12/19/2022
Albion Tourgée's Forgotten Proposal for Power to the People
by Brook Thomas
The Black Republican activist hoped to draft a Reconstruction constitution for North Carolina that vested power in the people, which might have prevented the potential mischief that could be unleashed by Supreme Court cases that threaten to empower state legislatures to thwart democracy.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
12/2/2022
Defending Democracy Will Mean Working Locally for the Common Good
by Nell Irvin Painter
Americans can fight both partisan dysfunction in Washington and the rise of authoritarianism and ethnic nationalism by working to advance the common good in their own communities, strengthening bonds of social solidarity.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
12/7/2022
There's No Choice But to Fight for a Better America
by Siva Vaidhyanathan
"We often misdiagnose our current malady as one of 'polarization.' That’s wrong. We have one rogue, ethno-authoritarian party and one fairly stable and diverse party."
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12/4/2022
While Decrying Election Denialists, Congress Can't Ignore the Need to Protect the Voting Rights Act
by Gregory T. Moore
The best way for a bipartsian coalition of lawmakers to demonstrate more than lip service to the values of democracy is to pass the Electoral Count Reform Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
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SOURCE: Religion Dispatches
11/17/2022
DeSantis v. Trump: More Polish, Less Bombast, Same Threat to Democracy?
by Annika Brockschmidt
Conservatives appear eager to boost Ron DeSantis as a "normal" conservative without Trump's "big lie" baggage. Yet his political career is a monument to the pursuit of minority rule, from gerrymandering to voting rights.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
11/11/2022
Why Direct Democracy is The Best Protection for Abortion Rights
by Rachel Rebouché and Mary Ziegler
Given the chance to vote directly on abortion rights, voters have been swayed by personal experience and shared stories to protect reproductive freedom and leave the choice in the hands of women, not politicians.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
10/6/2022
Scholars: Election Denial Becoming Official Republican Policy
Ruth Ben-Ghiat argues that the Big Lie is part of a process of normalizing the rejection of election results.
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SOURCE: NPR
9/25/2022
The Constitution's Support for Oligarchy
Jonathan Gienapp says that the Framers made deliberate choices to make the Constitution a bulwark against what they saw as the danger of broad-based democracy.
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9/25/2022
Thinking and Teaching the Implications of Federalist #10 for Democracy
by Jeff Schneider
Teachers of Constitutional history must push their students to understand something difficult: James Madison's vision of the "public good" is a vision of elite rule that today stands in the way of democratic solutions to society's problems.
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SOURCE: New York Review of Books
9/17/2022
Eric Foner on the Study of History and Democracy
"I’m always interested in the connections between past and present. The questions that interest me historically tend to come out of the moment I’m living in."
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SOURCE: Politico
9/15/2022
"Independent State Legislature" Legal Theory Based in Fake History
Charles Pinckney's ideas for the Constitution were rejected by the framers. Years later, he produced fake documents to aggrandize his own role at the convention. Right-wing legal activists have used them to argue that state legislatures can decide election results however they want.
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SOURCE: PBS News Hour
9/11/2022
Rick Hasen: Moore v. Harper and its Potential Impact on Elections
Major dark money donors have pushed a case to the Supreme Court that could allow state legislatures to overturn the will of voters to decide statewide elections and electoral college votes, says election law expert Rick Hasen.
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