Democracy in America is not well, but what ails it? According to one diagnosis, the country is suffering from multiple strains of one-man rule—tyranny, fascism, authoritarianism. Variants of the virus originate in the people and their passions. Citizens vote the tyrant into power. Racism, misogyny, or some other affliction of cruelty and fear, fuels their votes. Democracy is not just threatened by disease. It is the disease. This idea, of despotism from the demos, has a distinguished pedigree. Plato and Aristotle thought that all, or nearly all, forms of tyranny arise from the people. The vulgar many oppose the virtuous few, whose ethos of remove is an irritant to the many. Stirred by a demagogue, the people and their leader […]
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Categories
Economies, Political Theory, The Left, The Right
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Tags Andrew Jackson, Aristotle, authoritarianism, fascism, Matthew Simonton, oligarchy, Plato, Steve Bannon, tyranny, William McKinley
I have a piece in The Guardian on the meaning of Steve Bannon’s departure from the White House: Once upon a time, conservatives plotted a path that began with the magazines and ended in the White House. With Steve Bannon’s departure from the Trump administration on Friday to head the Breitbart News Network, we seem to be witnessing the reverse: an unspooling of history that begins in power and ends in print. In 1955, William F Buckley launched National Review, declaring war against liberalism and the Democratic party but also, and more immediately, a civil war on the right. … Since Charlottesville, pundits and historians have wondered whether we’re headed for a civil war. With Bannon’s exit, it’s clear that we […]
As some of you know, more and more of my commentary now appears on Facebook rather than on this blog. If you’re not averse to joining Facebook, you can catch it there; I encourage you to do so, as the conversations can be quite lively and good, involving lots of different folks. I’m maxed out on friends, but you can follow me. But since a lot of readers don’t want to join Facebook, I’m going to try to make it a regular feature—monthly or semi-monthly—to catch you up to speed on what I’ve been saying there. I’m going to collect various Facebook posts and post them here as a kind of regular journal or diary. Some will be out of date […]
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Categories
Foreign Policy, Middle East, Repression, The Left, The Right, The State, Violence
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Tags Al D'Amato, Andrew Jackson, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Israel/Palestine, Muslims, Neil Gorsuch, Obama, Richard Spencer, sanctuary city, Scott Stringer, Steve Bannon, Tish James, Trump