Tag: democracy
Away From Politics with Kathleen Raine (Then Back Again)
Are we capable of that on a scale that will regenerate our political life? Perhaps not, at least for now, but we can take heart from the knowledge that, over the long course of human events, peoples have built cities that embodied high civic ends.
Ode to Gettysburg at 161
To prove the American proposition, we must dedicate our lives to its truth with our deeds every day, and maybe someday with our lives themselves.
Straw Men and the Possibility of Community in Modernity
Between these extremes, however, is free choice within reasonable limits, which I believe makes the value of community and its deliberative fruits still possible, even within the reality of the fractured and deracinated world in which we are living.
Voting for a President Won’t Save the Republic
A democracy is not kept by filling in a ballot bubble once every four years. It’s kept by responsibly and virtuously exercising our freedoms in our homes, communities, and institutions day by day.
Real Communities and Democratic Theory
If we don’t experience full, unqualified “concrete, historical community,” then we won’t experience full, unqualified “genuine deliberation.”
The New Alignment
Contemplating this turn of events in our politics reminds me that we human beings have a strong desire for tidy coherence. Sometimes this desire can be a kind of sickness.
A Rural White American’s Reflection of White Rural Rage: Resentment is...
Despite Trump’s own divisive rhetoric, he makes rural Americans feel heard in ways neither majority party has in decades. Any politician or scholar who actually wants to address the root causes of polarization needs to reckon seriously with this reality.
Politics Beyond Thunderdome: Yuval Levin’s American Covenant
We cannot give into the temptation of thinking that our times are so different that basic civility must be cast aside. Once we have done that, we are lost.
Democracy Against Localism
That’s the great cultural task now: to relearn this old language, to keep it from dying out, to nurture it and refine and expand it, to develop new idioms and accents. Holston’s book is part of that project.
Beyond the Mechanism: An Economist Grapples with Statesmanship
When we refuse to engage our fellow citizens, we are also taking a public position. There is such a thing as non-partisan economics. But there is no such thing as non-political economics.