Republican Virtue
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Mordor, the Shire, and Freedom in the Public Sphere
[This post first went up in 2012 as a further development of a post entitled "Henry A. Giroux: Neoliberalism Defined", which focused on the way in which Neoliberalism has supplanted the older political idea of republican freedom with an idea of freedom as consumer choice. It relates to themes developed in "Ukraine and the Politics
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University Neo-Puritanism
In the classroom, backlash for unpopular opinions is so commonplace that many students have stopped voicing them, sometimes fearing lower grades if they don’t censor themselves. According to a 2021 survey administered by College Pulse of over 37,000 students at 159 colleges, 80 percent of students self-censor at least some of the time. Forty-eight percent
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Republics vs Democracies
Some of the earliest contrasts between “democracy” and “republic” in Lee’s sense, according to Cornell historian Lawrence Glickman, came from conservative opponents of the New Deal. At the time, President Roosevelt sold his policies — both domestic and foreign — as a means of defending and enhancing American democracy. Some of his opponents, who saw
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On Courage and Prudence
One of Trump’s spokespeople derided the Biden event as “an episode of Mister Rodgers Neighborhood.” (In authentic Trump style, she misspelled the name.) If this was meant to suggest that the evening was all smiles and saccharine—well, it only showed that the spokesperson had never watched the classic children’s program hosted by Fred Rogers. Rogers
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Rule of Law vs. Law and Order
Authoritarian nations come in many different stripes, but they all share a fundamental characteristic: The people who live in them are not allowed to freely choose their own leaders. This is why Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, in his speech announcing his vote to convict on the first article of impeachment, said that “corrupting
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McConnell’s Calculation
It would seem that McConnell feels a need to disguise the fact that the Senate impeachment trial is a sham and a cover up. Americans expect a fair trial. Assuming most Americans have retained at least some shred of sanity, McConnell's obvious cover up would lead them to vote out Trump and the senators who
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Some Random Thoughts on the American Character
I never quite grasped why Jefferson and Adams were so discouraged by the way the country had democratized by the 1820s. Wasn't that what they, especially Jefferson, had hoped for? I tended to dismiss their concerns as a snooty elitism. But I understand it differently now, especially in light of Trump’s ascendancy. Reading Wood, Howe,
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Silicon Valley Progressivism
"And when you walk thru Uber’s HQ in San Francisco, the place is pulsating with young, brilliant and dedicated employees who believe they are part of doing something historic and meaningful and won’t take no for an answer. It’s a feeling I’ve been fortunate to experience previously and feel incredibly lucky to be surrounded by
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The Tea Party and the Mythos of ‘Real’ Americans
People in Red America are in pain, and it's deeper than just economic. I'd argue that a good deal of the pain comes from the disjunction between its mindset and the real world in which Red America lives. The world no longer makes sense for a mindset that was developed in the early 19th century.
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Technocratic v. Humanistic Education 2
I wrote on this theme here, but this kid really gets it: See also Patrick Denneen's eloquent speech at Notre Dame against the Common Core. Key grafs: I began by suggesting that it was in the very absence of any national standard for education, and the strong tradition of local control of education, that we