democracy

• 
• 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. 

• 
• 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. 

• 
• 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."

• 
• 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. 

• 
• 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. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  9/5/2022
  

  Can We Do Better than Liberal Democracy?

  by Adam Gopnik

  Critic Adam Gopnik examines two recent books on alternatives to representative democracy that respond to the recent use of institutions by power-seeking authoritarians. 

• 
• SOURCE: Substack
  8/28/2022
  

  The Democrats, Not the "Party of Lincoln," are the Best Hope to Protect Abe's Legacy

  by Eli Merritt

  Abraham Lincoln went to Washington as president-elect animated by the commitments to justice and liberty defined in the first Republican Party convention. If the Republicans won't honor these commitments, the Democrats must do it. 

• 
• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  8/22/2022
  

  Our Civics Education Can't Fight These Threats to Democracy

  by Eric Mlyn

  Educational institutions are already "politicized" by organized attacks by an authoritarian movement. They need to set aside the fear of controversy and assert themselves as defenders of democracy. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  8/15/2022
  

  American Democracy Wasn't Built to be Democratic

  by Louis Menand

  In a review essay of several books diagnosing the maladies of American democracy, Louis Menand concludes that the system itself is working as designed: to thwart popular rule. 

• 
• SOURCE: Vox
  8/8/2022
  

  What Happens When SCOTUS is This Unpopular?

  It's not unprecedented for Justices to shift their positions when confronted with public outrage, but five of the current members of the court have explicitly declared their indifference to public outcry, and understand there's little to constrain their future decisions. 

• 
• SOURCE: Age of Revolutions
  8/8/2022
  

  Thoroughly Modern Maxie: Robespierre and His Legacy for Democracy Today

  by Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall

  "If Robespierre was not by nature a murderous despot, who was he and what does he have to teach us – especially at a time, like that of the French Revolution, when progressives and liberals are divided about how to prioritize the rights of minoritized groups?"

• 
• 7/31/2022
  

  Time to Amend the Constitution

  by Don Fraser

  Significant changes are needed to the Constitution in order to preserve any semblance of democratic government. 

• 
• 7/24/2022
  

  For America, Let's Send the Adults Back to School

  by David Chamberlain

  The lyceum movement of the 1800s offers a model to reestablish desperately needed civic education and communal interaction across the lines that divide Americans. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  7/21/2022
  

  The Dangerous Misunderstanding of America's History of Mob Action

  by Stefan Lund

  Contrary to the protestations of January 6th apologists, mob action in America has usually worked to suppress, rather than defend, democracy.

• 
• 7/8/2022
  

  History Offers Warning that Some Crises of Civic Virtue are Overblown

  by Bruce Dearstyne

  The American Bar Association's Committee on American Citizenship warned in 1922 of a decline in civic awareness that threatened the very survival of the republic. A century later, it offers a lesson that sometimes warnings of democratic peril are self-serving. 

• 
• 7/8/2022
  

  The Second Floundering

  by Brook Thomas

  Although scholars have identified the Reconstruction Amendments as a redemption of the flaws of the original Constitution, it's important to understand, as critics did at the time, that the 14th and 15th Amendments left many gaps in the American democracy. 

• 
• 7/3/2022
  

  Organized Defiance May Be the Only Answer to an Undemocratic Court

  by Alan J. Singer

  If Democrats in the legislative branch won't use their majorities to define the scope of judicial power to stop rulings that defy the will of the public, the public must organize to defy the rulings of the courts. 

• 
• 7/3/2022
  

  Where Will America Be by 2030?

  by Ed Simon

  The right's agenda is for a white, Christian, patriarchal nationalism that simply can't be achieved by majority rule. That's what the Supreme Court and 400,000,000 privately owned guns are for.

• 
• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  6/27/2022
  

  The Classic Model of Education and Democracy Can't Address Today's School Politics

  by Steven Mintz

  The idea of education serving democracy by producing informed citizens is tested by the lack of agreement about what that goal means. Can the competing claims on the education system be reconciled? 

• 
• SOURCE: New Statesman
  6/30/2022
  

  Seeing Through America's "Crisis Industrial Complex"

  by Nikhil Pal Singh

  While the elite media class indulges in lurid fantasies of an armed breakup of the nation, those who live precarious or impoverished lives find themselves already enmeshed in a civil war; the real red/blue conflict is about who will control the infrastructure of repression built up over the last half century.