Democracy Under Fire

Democracy Under Fire PDF Author: Lawrence R. Jacobs
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190877243
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
How did democracy become so vulnerable in America? Donald Trump is a shrill warning of the political system's fragility, but he alone is not the problem. The vulnerability is broader and deeper-and looms still. Even before Trump ran for president, his disdain for the rules and norms of democracy and the US Constitution was well-known by many prominent Republicans who were unable to stop his nomination. Trump's presidency is the culmination of a series of political decisions since the late 18th century that ceded party nominations to small cliques of ideologues. Democracy Under Fire provides a readable, if disturbing, history of American democracy and proposes recommendations to restore it.

Democracy Under Fire

Democracy Under Fire PDF Author: Lawrence R. Jacobs
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190877243
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book Here

Book Description
How did democracy become so vulnerable in America? Donald Trump is a shrill warning of the political system's fragility, but he alone is not the problem. The vulnerability is broader and deeper-and looms still. Even before Trump ran for president, his disdain for the rules and norms of democracy and the US Constitution was well-known by many prominent Republicans who were unable to stop his nomination. Trump's presidency is the culmination of a series of political decisions since the late 18th century that ceded party nominations to small cliques of ideologues. Democracy Under Fire provides a readable, if disturbing, history of American democracy and proposes recommendations to restore it.

Under Fire

Under Fire PDF Author: April Ryan
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538113376
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Veteran White House reporter April Ryan thought she had seen everything in her two decades as a White House correspondent. And then came the Trump administration. In Under Fire, Ryan takes us inside the confusion and chaos of the Trump White House to understand how she and other reporters adjusted to the new normal. She takes us inside the policy debates, the revolving door of personnel appointments, and what it is like when she, as a reporter asking difficult questions, finds herself in the spotlight, becoming part of the story. With the world on edge and a country grappling with a new controversy almost daily, Ryan gives readers a glimpse into current events from her perspective, not only from inside the briefing room but also as a target of those who want to avoid answering probing questions. After reading her new book, readers will have an unprecedented inside view of the Trump White House and what it is like to be a reporter Under Fire.

Citizenship under Fire

Citizenship under Fire PDF Author: Sigal R. Ben-Porath
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400827183
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
Citizenship under Fire examines the relationship among civic education, the culture of war, and the quest for peace. Drawing on examples from Israel and the United States, Sigal Ben-Porath seeks to understand how ideas about citizenship change when a country is at war, and what educators can do to prevent some of the most harmful of these changes. Perhaps the most worrisome one, Ben-Porath contends, is a growing emphasis in schools and elsewhere on social conformity, on tendentious teaching of history, and on drawing stark distinctions between them and us. As she writes, "The varying characteristics of citizenship in times of war and peace add up to a distinction between belligerent citizenship, which is typical of democracies in wartime, and the liberal democratic citizenship that is characteristic of more peaceful democracies." Ben-Porath examines how various theories of education--principally peace education, feminist education, and multicultural education--speak to the distinctive challenges of wartime. She argues that none of these theories are satisfactory on their own theoretical terms or would translate easily into practice. In the final chapter, she lays out her own alternative theory--"expansive education"--which she believes holds out more promise of widening the circles of participation in schools, extending the scope of permissible debate, and diversifying the questions asked about the opinions voiced.

Science under Fire

Science under Fire PDF Author: Andrew Jewett
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674987918
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Americans have long been suspicious of experts and elites. This new history explains why so many have believed that science has the power to corrupt American culture. Americans today are often skeptical of scientific authority. Many conservatives dismiss climate change and Darwinism as liberal fictions, arguing that “tenured radicals” have coopted the sciences and other disciplines. Some progressives, especially in the universities, worry that science’s celebration of objectivity and neutrality masks its attachment to Eurocentric and patriarchal values. As we grapple with the implications of climate change and revolutions in fields from biotechnology to robotics to computing, it is crucial to understand how scientific authority functions—and where it has run up against political and cultural barriers. Science under Fire reconstructs a century of battles over the cultural implications of science in the United States. Andrew Jewett reveals a persistent current of criticism which maintains that scientists have injected faulty social philosophies into the nation’s bloodstream under the cover of neutrality. This charge of corruption has taken many forms and appeared among critics with a wide range of social, political, and theological views, but common to all is the argument that an ideologically compromised science has produced an array of social ills. Jewett shows that this suspicion of science has been a major force in American politics and culture by tracking its development, varied expressions, and potent consequences since the 1920s. Looking at today’s battles over science, Jewett argues that citizens and leaders must steer a course between, on the one hand, the naïve image of science as a pristine, value-neutral form of knowledge, and, on the other, the assumption that scientists’ claims are merely ideologies masquerading as truths.

Freedom Under Fire

Freedom Under Fire PDF Author: Michael Linfield
Publisher: South End Press
ISBN: 9780896083745
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
"The great wars we have fought for the sake of liberty have been accompanied, without exception, by the most draconian assaults on individual rights. This is the theme of Michael Linfield's Freedom Under Fire, and he documents it with examples from every war since the American Revolution."--The Progressive "Linfield demonstrates conclusively, starting with the American Revolution and coming right up to the invasion of Panama, that the Bill of Rights is set aside by the government again and again, for reasons of 'national security.' He performs an important service, reminding us that liberty cannot be entrusted to the Bill of Rights or to the three branches of government, but only can be safeguarded by our own vigilance."--Howard Zinn

World on Fire

World on Fire PDF Author: Amy Chua
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 1400076374
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
The reigning consensus holds that the combination of free markets and democracy would transform the third world and sweep away the ethnic hatred and religious zealotry associated with underdevelopment. In this revelatory investigation of the true impact of globalization, Yale Law School professor Amy Chua explains why many developing countries are in fact consumed by ethnic violence after adopting free market democracy. Chua shows how in non-Western countries around the globe, free markets have concentrated starkly disproportionate wealth in the hands of a resented ethnic minority. These “market-dominant minorities” – Chinese in Southeast Asia, Croatians in the former Yugoslavia, whites in Latin America and South Africa, Indians in East Africa, Lebanese in West Africa, Jews in post-communist Russia – become objects of violent hatred. At the same time, democracy empowers the impoverished majority, unleashing ethnic demagoguery, confiscation, and sometimes genocidal revenge. She also argues that the United States has become the world’s most visible market-dominant minority, a fact that helps explain the rising tide of anti-Americanism around the world. Chua is a friend of globalization, but she urges us to find ways to spread its benefits and curb its most destructive aspects.

Zen Under Fire

Zen Under Fire PDF Author: Marianne Elliott
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1402281129
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
I am about to be left in charge of the office. I'm not sure I'm ready for the responsibility, so I double-check with my boss. He reassures me. "You'll be fine, Marianne. As long as no one kills Amanullah Khan, you'll be fine." By midday, Amanullah Khan is dead. Marianne Elliot is a human rights lawyer stationed with the UN in Herat when the unthinkable happens: a tribal leader is assassinated, and she must defuse the situation before it leads to widespread bloodshed. And this is just the beginning of the story in Afghanistan. Zen Under Fire lays bare the struggles of a war-torn region from a uniquely personal perspective. Honest and vivid, her story reveals the shattering effect that the high-stress environment has on Marianne and her relationships. Redefining the question of what it really means to do good in a country that is under siege from within, Zen Under Fire is an honest, moving, at times terrifying true story of a women's experience at peacekeeping in one of the most dangerous places on Earth. "This is an amazing book, kind of like if Eat, Pray, Love had happened in Afghanistan and the stakes were life and death."—Susan Piver, New York Times bestselling author of Wisdom of a Broken Heart

How Democracies Die

How Democracies Die PDF Author: Steven Levitsky
Publisher: Broadway Books
ISBN: 1524762938
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Fateful alliances -- Gatekeeping in America -- The great Republican abdication -- Subverting democracy -- The guardrails of democracy -- The unwritten rules of American politics -- The unraveling -- Trump against the guardrails -- Saving democracy

Stoking the Fire of Democracy

Stoking the Fire of Democracy PDF Author: Stephen Noble Smith
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780879464141
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 123

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Book Description
Stephen Smith is a voice from and for the next generation of fighters for social justice, giving his colleagues an introduction to grassroots organizing based on his own experiences in places as diverse as Harvard University, Botswana and Chicago. For four years, he was the lead organizer of PACT, a grassroots organization for young adults affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation. Stoking the Fire of Democracy explains how organizations are built and sustained, how they go into action around issues of common concern, how they exercise power, and how they learn from their successes and failures. For young people who want to know what comes next, this book will help them become what Saul Alinksy called "the fire under the boiler of democracy."

Twilight of Democracy

Twilight of Democracy PDF Author: Anne Applebaum
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385545819
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "How did our democracy go wrong? This extraordinary document ... is Applebaum's answer." —Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian explains, with electrifying clarity, why elites in democracies around the world are turning toward nationalism and authoritarianism. From the United States and Britain to continental Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege, while authoritarianism is on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum, an award-winning historian of Soviet atrocities who was one of the first American journalists to raise an alarm about antidemocratic trends in the West, explains the lure of nationalism and autocracy. In this captivating essay, she contends that political systems with radically simple beliefs are inherently appealing, especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone else. Elegantly written and urgently argued, Twilight of Democracy is a brilliant dissection of a world-shaking shift and a stirring glimpse of the road back to democratic values.