Author: Christopher Beem
Publisher: Penn State University Press
ISBN: 9780271093949
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
Outlines specific steps that average American citizens can take to reduce political polarization and safeguard democratic institutions.
Author: Christopher Beem
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271094362
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237
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Book Description
The insurrection of January 6, 2021, demonstrated conclusively that tribalism in the United States has become dangerous. The “other side” is no longer viewed as a well-intentioned opponent but as an existential threat. If we don’t change course, American democracy is far from assured. This book outlines specific steps that average citizens can take to back the nation away from the brink. Instead of looking to political leaders, institutions, or policy for solutions to extreme partisanship, Christopher Beem argues that concerned citizens can and must take up the cause. He spells out seven civic practices we can all follow that will help us work against our antidemocratic tendencies and reorient the nation toward the “more perfect union” of our Founders. Beem’s road map to restore our democracy draws on thinkers from Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas to James Madison, Hannah Arendt, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Empathetic and eminently reasonable, The Seven Democratic Virtues presents practical advice for what each of us can do to change the political discourse and save our democracy. This is necessary reading for our politics today—and in the future.
Author: Teun J. Dekker
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000834328
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 163
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Book Description
This book argues that the liberal arts and sciences (LAS) model of education can inspire reform across higher education to help students acquire crucial civic virtues. Based on interviews with 59 students from LAS programmes across Europe, the book posits that LAS education can develop a range of citizenship skills that are central to the democratic process. The interviews provide insight into how studying LAS prepares students for citizenship by asking them to reflect on their education, what it taught them, and how it did so. Building on these insights, seven key democratic competencies are identified and linked to concrete educational practices that foster them, leading to an agenda for higher education reform. Ultimately arguing for making the teaching of civic virtue a more central part of university education in Europe, this book will appeal to researchers, educators, and politicians with an interest in education policy, philosophy of education, and democratic theory, as well as concerned citizens. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Author: George Tsakiridis
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666730211
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 96
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Book Description
Life is not fair. It is a lesson all of us learn at one time or another. Despite this, we have trouble accepting this plain truth. At a certain point, we have to realize that we are not subject to the whims of the world. We have to take control of our character. In Seven Virtues for Success, the reader engages this practical truth about navigating life. We cannot control those around us, but we can control our own thoughts and actions. While meditating on these seven cardinal virtues—humility, gratitude, diligence, agency, relationship, forgiveness, and kindness—the reader is invited to set their mind towards a foundation of character. Once our character is strong, the difficulties of life become easier to encounter. The road is straightforward, yet difficult, as history has shown us through religious texts and wisdom literature. This book is a distillation of thought on character building in the modern age. Starting with the ancient method of building habit found in Aristotle, it begins the path to thinking about how we build our own virtues and set our mind on the road to success.
Author: Dr Peter a Wish
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
ISBN: 9781544507293
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 314
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Book Description
If you ask candidates and campaign strategists for the keys to a successful campaign, they say logistics like fundraising, poll numbers, and grassroots. These answers aren't wrong, but they overlook an equally important ingredient to victory: making an emotional connection with voters. If voters don't connect with you, they won't vote for you. Our brains are hardwired to bond with others through stories and nonverbal cues. Yet, when many candidates hit the campaign trail, they too often emphasize data and policy, which leaves voters unmoved. In The Candidate's 7 Deadly Sins, Dr. Peter A. Wish teaches tested strategies that gain candidates the critical advantage over their opponents. He outlines the sins to avoid--being pessimistic, canned, tentative, reactive, cerebral, partisan, and arrogant--and provides a road map for turning each sin into a winning virtue. Dr. Wish draws on past and current case studies of political winners and losers, cutting-edge neuroscience, and his experience working with candidates and campaign teams. Wish found that candidates who connect emotionally with voters don't just win their hearts and minds--they win elections.
Author: Thomas Jackson Singleton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Obedience
Languages : en
Pages : 270
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Book Description
Author: John Dewey
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN:
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 456
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Book Description
. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.
Author: Amy Kittelstrom
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1594204853
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 450
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Book Description
The first people in the world to call themselves 'liberals' were New England Christians in the early republic, for whom being liberal meant being receptive to a range of beliefs and values. The story begins in the mid-eighteenth century, when the first Boston liberals brought the Enlightenment into Reformation Christianity, tying equality and liberty to the human soul at the same moment these root concepts were being tied to democracy. The nineteenth century saw the development of a robust liberal intellectual culture in America, built on open-minded pursuit of truth and acceptance of human diversity. By the twentieth century, what had begun in Boston as a narrow, patrician democracy transformed into a religion of democracy in which the new liberals of modern America believed that where different viewpoints overlap, common truth is revealed. The core American principles of liberty and equality were never free from religion but full of religion.
Author: Sheldon S. Wolin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691178488
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 394
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Book Description
Democracy is struggling in America--by now this statement is almost cliché. But what if the country is no longer a democracy at all? In Democracy Incorporated, Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"? Wolin portrays a country where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive--and where elites are eager to keep them that way. At best the nation has become a "managed democracy" where the public is shepherded, not sovereign. At worst it is a place where corporate power no longer answers to state controls. Wolin makes clear that today's America is in no way morally or politically comparable to totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, yet he warns that unchecked economic power risks verging on total power and has its own unnerving pathologies. Wolin examines the myths and mythmaking that justify today's politics, the quest for an ever-expanding economy, and the perverse attractions of an endless war on terror. He argues passionately that democracy's best hope lies in citizens themselves learning anew to exercise power at the local level. Democracy Incorporated is one of the most worrying diagnoses of America's political ills to emerge in decades. It is sure to be a lightning rod for political debate for years to come. Now with a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Chris Hedges, Democracy Incorporated remains an essential work for understanding the state of democracy in America.
Author: Samuel P. Huntington
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806186046
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 388
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Book Description
Between 1974 and 1990 more than thirty countries in southern Europe, Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe shifted from authoritarian to democratic systems of government. This global democratic revolution is probably the most important political trend in the late twentieth century. In The Third Wave, Samuel P. Huntington analyzes the causes and nature of these democratic transitions, evaluates the prospects for stability of the new democracies, and explores the possibility of more countries becoming democratic. The recent transitions, he argues, are the third major wave of democratization in the modem world. Each of the two previous waves was followed by a reverse wave in which some countries shifted back to authoritarian government. Using concrete examples, empirical evidence, and insightful analysis, Huntington provides neither a theory nor a history of the third wave, but an explanation of why and how it occurred. Factors responsible for the democratic trend include the legitimacy dilemmas of authoritarian regimes; economic and social development; the changed role of the Catholic Church; the impact of the United States, the European Community, and the Soviet Union; and the "snowballing" phenomenon: change in one country stimulating change in others. Five key elite groups within and outside the nondemocratic regime played roles in shaping the various ways democratization occurred. Compromise was key to all democratizations, and elections and nonviolent tactics also were central. New democracies must deal with the "torturer problem" and the "praetorian problem" and attempt to develop democratic values and processes. Disillusionment with democracy, Huntington argues, is necessary to consolidating democracy. He concludes the book with an analysis of the political, economic, and cultural factors that will decide whether or not the third wave continues. Several "Guidelines for Democratizers" offer specific, practical suggestions for initiating and carrying out reform. Huntington's emphasis on practical application makes this book a valuable tool for anyone engaged in the democratization process. At this volatile time in history, Huntington's assessment of the processes of democratization is indispensable to understanding the future of democracy in the world.
