Our democracy is shaken by the extreme right today, and racism lies at the bottom of the fears and antagonisms that have been used to stir up violent actions and threats against our government and our democratic institutions. Republican leaders, Fox News executives and personalities, incendiary conspiracy-theory followers, ordinary Americans everywhere ... step back from …
Even worse than we thought …
We have understood for quite a while that there are dangerous anti-democratic forces in America today — hate-based organizations, right-wing militias, anti-government extremists, white suprematists, Proud Boys and Boogaloo provocateurs, and Republican politicians who care only about maintaining their political positions and power. And of course, we have a president who has complete contempt and …
Trumpism and Hannah Arendt’s reflections on totalitarianism
In a recent post I considered Hannah Arendt's reflections on what she termed the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Her observations in The Origins of Totalitarianism amount to less than a developed theory of a political system, and more of a case study of two unusual political regimes that did their ugliest work at roughly the …
Continue reading "Trumpism and Hannah Arendt’s reflections on totalitarianism"
Conservative and progressive forms of democracy
An earlier post suggested that we cannot really address the issue of the stability of liberal democracy without considering issues of economic justice as well. It is worth separating the features of a modern society into the "liberal democratic" cluster and the "social democratic" cluster for a reason that is familiar from Rawls (Justice as …
Continue reading "Conservative and progressive forms of democracy"
Social democracy, unbridled capitalism, and right-wing populism
An earlier post raised the question of popular support for -- satisfaction with -- the state of democracy in many democratic nations. It was noted that levels of satisfaction are low in many democracies -- US, UK, France, and Spain, for example (link). There I defined liberal democracy in these terms: a political system in …
Continue reading "Social democracy, unbridled capitalism, and right-wing populism"
Making the case for liberal democracy
Recent posts have considered the question of whether liberal democracy is stable, or whether the assaults on liberal democracy by the populist far-right are likely to further undermine democratic institutions and values. In particular, I have considered the question of whether democracy generates its own supporting political psychology (as Rawls seems to believe), with citizens …
The moral force of the US Constitution
Why should we revere our constitution as the fundamental set of political and moral principles underlying our democracy? Is it simply because it was written and adopted by the “Framers”? Is it because it has legitimacy as a whole by having been democratically ratified through our history? Or, most fundamentally, is it because there are …
Astounding assault on democracy
Donald Trump's attack on the electoral system has gone far beyond normal and evidence-based legal challenges to details about the election and the vote counting. There is nothing normal or inconsequential about the president's current tactics or the support he receives from influential Republican officials. Trump and his supporters are now undertaking to reverse the …
The 2020 election
There is something encouraging about the health of American democracy on Election Day, 2020. That is the passion for our democracy that so many millions of US citizens have shown in coming out to vote — either through early voting or in-person voting on November 3. This is not an apathetic electorate this season; rather, …
Slipping towards authoritarianism
Many observers have raised concerns about the direction that American politics has taken in the past decade, and especially since the election of 2016. The concern is that conservatives in the United States, included elected officials and GOP leaders, have increasingly shown disregard for fundamental democratic values: the independence of the judiciary, the inviolable role …
Understanding Society 