democracy

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• 5/24/2020
  

  No More Business as Usual! It’s Time for Joe Biden to Defend our Democracy

  by Claudia Koonz

  A historian of European dictatorship argues that Joe Biden must recognize that not just the election but the health of democracy is at stake and challenge the administration's efforts to operate above the law.

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• SOURCE: BBC
  5/14/2020
  

  Battle of Lewes: England's First Fight for Democracy?

  King Henry's defeat led to a brief experiment in governing where the king's powers were delegated to a parliament while he remained head of state.

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• SOURCE: John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress
  5/4/2020
  

  Virtual Conversation on the Future of Democracy: Yuval Levin, May 13

  The John W. Kluge Center's upcoming online events include this conversation with Yuval Levin on democratic institutions in crisis. 

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• SOURCE: The New Daily
  4/27/2020
  

  On this Day: Chinese Students March in Pro-Democracy Tiananmen Square Protests

  On this day in 1989, enormous crowds of Chinese students and new-found supporters marched through major cities in China to fight for democratic freedoms.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/15/2020
  

  Despite the Risks, Letting Americans Vote by Mail in November is Good for Democracy

  by Jonathan W. White

  Today’s debate about broadening access to absentee ballots amid a pandemic should be less controversial than the Civil War era struggle over creating an entirely new system.  

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• 4/19/2020
  

  Social Crisis and the Public Use of Reason

  by Sam Ben-Meir

  We cannot afford to overlook the public use of reason: reason that does not simply solve a given problem, but asks further unsettling questions, such as how did this problem arise in the first place?

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• SOURCE: TIME
  4/7/2020
  

  How the Civil War Changed the Way Americans Thought About Economic Inequality

  by Daniel R. Mandell

  As the Civil War became a campaign to end slavery, some leading Republicans envisioned using confiscation to reshape the aristocratic South into a more equal society in terms of property ownership and power.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/31/2020
  

  Coronavirus Kills Its First Democracy

  You could say that Hungary was already “immunocompromised.”

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• SOURCE: Slate
  

  The Plague That Killed Athenian Democracy

  by Robert Zaretsky

  Want to know how disease can permanently alter a society? Read Thucydides.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/16/2020
  

  How the Coronavirus Could Trigger a Backslide on Freedom Around the World

  by Allie Funk and Isabel Linzer

  Authorities worldwide are using the coronavirus as a pretext to crack down on human rights for political purposes. 

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• SOURCE: Harvard Business Review
  3/16/2020
  

  What Democracy’s History Tells Us About Its Future

  In an email exchange hosted by the Harvard Business Review, Professor of Business Rebecca Henderson and Professor of History Jill Lepore discussed capitalism’s role in an increasingly populist world.

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• 3/6/2020
  

  A Founder of American Religious Nationalism

  by Katherine Stewart

  Christian nationalism today is a political movement, and its primary goal is power. Its ultimate aim, formulated by R.J. Rushdoony, is to replace our modern constitutional Republic with a “biblical” order that derives its legitimacy not from the people but from God and the Bible – or, at least, the God and the Bible that men like Rushdoony claimed to know.

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• 2/25/20
  

  Abolishing the Electoral College Requires the Unanimous Consent of Every State in the Union

  by Robert Hardaway

  The Founders were right: the Electoral College ensures small states and minority groups matter in our democracy. 

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  2/24/20
  

  The ancient Greeks had alternative facts too – they were just more chill about it

  by Joel Christensen

  Persuading others – or even yourself – what is true is not a challenge unique to the modern era. Even the ancient Greeks had to confront different realities.

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• SOURCE: USA Today
  2/6/20
  

  Trump impeachment acquittal is bad news for democracy, but history shows us how to cope

  by Frederick E. Hoxie

  We have been here before. Our predecessors dug in and took it one topic, one government failure and one election at a time. We should, too.

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• 2/9/20
  

  Trump's Acquittal and the History of the Intentionally Undemocratic Senate

  by Ed Simon

  What can and must be learned from the impeachment affair isn’t that resistance to Trump has to be fruitless, but rather that we can’t expect institutions and procedures to be that which saves us. 

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• SOURCE: New Yorker
  1/27/20
  

  The Last Time Democracy Almost Died

  by Jill Lepore

  Learning from the upheaval of the nineteen-thirties.

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• 1/12/20
  

  Why The West Is Losing The Fight For Democracy

  by Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes

  We once had trouble imagining a future that is not essentially democratic and capitalist. That is not the way we think today. Most of us now have trouble imagining a future, even in the West, that remains securely democratic and liberal.

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• 1/12/20
  

  Trump Checks all of the Impeachment Boxes: Will it Matter?

  by Donald J. Fraser

  Unlike other presidents, Trump’s actions meet each of the requirements that the Framer’s laid out to impeach a president. Ironically, just as impeachment is needed most, the partisan tenor of the times may make it impossible to accomplish.

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• 1/12/20
  

  Can America Recapture Its Signature Exuberance?

  by Tracy Dahlby

  Walt Whitman understood transcendence of national mood is an uphill climb. Periods of division and strife sort new realities into a renovated sense of purpose. Yet periods of upheaval must necessarily lead to a refitting, not obliteration, of our common story or democracy is toast.