148 Posts Found

Matt Miller is right that “localist” arrangements in education deliver maximum power to teachers’ unions (“First, Kill All the School Boards,” January/February 2008 Atlantic), which can draw on national resources and political connections, stultifying attempts at real improvement. But in a national system, the fashionable, counterevidential theo­ries of the technocratic elite remain beyond correction since, being national, they have been removed from competition.

So try … [ Read more ]

Author: M. T. Pearse | Source: The Atlantic (April2008) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Education | Scholarship, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy

Within the field of moral philosophy, the main rival to deontology [the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules, rather than based on the consequences of the action] is a school of thought known as “consequentialism.” In this view, the morality of actions must be judged by their consequences: … [ Read more ]

Author: Dylan Matthews | Source: Vox (January 27, 2020) | Subjects: Excerpts, Philosophy, Politics & Public Policy

Society is of its nature oligarchical, and the power of the oligarchy always rests upon force and fraud. [James] Burnham does not deny that ‘good’ motives may operate in private life, but he maintains that politics consists of the struggle for power, and nothing else. All historical changes finally boil down to the replacement of one ruling class by another. All talk about democracy, liberty, … [ Read more ]

Author: George Orwell | Source: Polemic (May1946) | Subjects: Excerpts, History, Politics & Public Policy

A 2014 article in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on “motive attribution asymmetry” — the assumption that your ideology is based in love, while your opponent’s is based in hate — suggests an answer. The researchers found that the average Republican and the average Democrat today suffer from a level of motive attribution asymmetry that is comparable with that of Palestinians and … [ Read more ]

Author: Arthur C. Brooks | Source: The New York Times (March 2, 2019) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

New research published in Current Biology confirms this feeling: people with radical beliefs actually think differently than those without. Specifically, radicals have less metacognitive sensitivity than moderates.

Metacognition refers to the ability to be aware of and analyze one’s own thinking. Metacognitive sensitivity is similar, but more specific: it refers to the ability to distinguish between one’s correct and incorrect judgements.

[…]‌

First, the researchers developed … [ Read more ]

Author: Matt Davis | Source: Big Think (February 15, 2019) | Subjects: Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior

With the possible exception of Yuval Levin’s The Fractured Republic, for Americans who care about politics and the future of our country, Hillbilly Elegy is the most important book of 2016. You cannot understand what’s happening now without first reading J.D. Vance. His book does for poor white people what Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book did for poor black people: give them voice and presence … [ Read more ]

Author: Rod Dreher | Source: The American Conservative (July 22, 2016) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Trump

I started tracking Trump-related articles after his shock victory in 2016, with the idea that his presidency will be a period of history studied in depth for generations to come. I continued to do so in 2018 and here is that collection. Note that I will not be doing it going forward as I will be spending multiple months away from my computer and … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Politics & Public Policy, Trump

Our political divisions aren’t red versus blue, but fixed versus fluid.

Author: Ezra Klein | Source: Vox (December 18, 2018) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy

Congress’s popularity seems to depend less on public involvement in the political process than on the morality of the representatives.

Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Autumn2002) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy

Why is corruption so pervasive around the globe?

Author: Jakob Svensson | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Winter2006) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Law | Legal, Politics & Public Policy

How Yasir Arafat destroyed Palestine.

Author: David Samuels | Source: The Atlantic (September2005) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, International, People, Politics & Public Policy

Third World poverty may often be a contributing factor in terrorism, but it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause, argues Richard K. Betts, director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University […] “Economic development in an area where the political and religious impulses remain unresolved could serve to improve the resource base for terrorism rather than undercut it.”

[…]‌

Terrorism is … [ Read more ]

Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Summer2002) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, International, Terrorism

Tocqueville noticed this back in the 1830s … almost every political question is turned into a question about rights, because the idea of rights and of individual rights [is] so deeply ingrained, not only in the Constitution or in the Bill of Rights, but also in American public culture, in the political culture.

We cannot argue so much in the name of the good society, or … [ Read more ]

Author: Michael Sandel | Source: The Atlantic (October2007) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Law | Legal, Politics & Public Policy

Why is crime rising in so many American cities? The answer implicates one of the most celebrated antipoverty programs of recent decades.

Author: Hanna Rosin | Source: The Atlantic (July2008) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Culture, Demographics, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy

A veteran American negotiator derives seven rules of the road from his decades of experience in Arab-Israeli peace talks.

Author: Aaron David Miller | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Spring2008) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, International, Politics & Public Policy

Bad schools are not going to sink the American economy. Despite what the headlines say, U.S. students fare well in international comparisons. It’s the schools serving the poor that demand our attention.

Author: Jay Mathews | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Spring2008) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Education | Scholarship, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy

All evidence to the contrary, we continue to believe, deep in our hearts, that the Founders’ “We the People” meant all the people, not just the propertied white men.

Authors: Brooke Allen, Jill Lepore | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Autumn2012) | Subjects: America, Articles & Links, Excerpts, History, Politics & Public Policy

Frances Hesselbein talks about the potential virtues of mandatory public service.

Author: Frances Hesselbein | Source: Leader to Leader (Winter2008) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

Motivated reasoning, bias, fake news, conspiracy theories, and more, explained.

Author: Brian Resnick | Source: Vox (October 23, 2018) | Subjects: Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior

Who is responsible for the past eight years of dismal American governance? “George W. Bush” is a decent answer. But we should reserve some blame for the Founding Fathers, who created a presidential office that is ill-considered, vaguely defined, and ripe for abuse. Here’s how to fix what the Founders got wrong—before the next G. W. Bush enters the Oval Office.

Author: Garrett Epps | Source: The Atlantic (January2009) | Subjects: Excerpts, History, Politics & Public Policy