148 Posts Found

The Republican party has reached bottom and in their few moments of sobriety, conservatives know it.

Republicans began as the anti-slavery party in direct and vocal opposition to Southern Racism and the Know Nothings. They fought a civil war in order to change the world for the better.

Today it is the Klan and the John Birch Society cheering the Republican candidate on.

The first Republican president was … [ Read more ]

Author: Jim Wright | Source: Stonekettle Station (September 19, 2016) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Trump

“Many people say” is what’s known as an argumentum ad populum. If we were a nation of logicians, we would dismiss the argument as dumb.

I think it’s important not to dismiss the president’s reply simply as dumb. We ought to assume that it’s darkly brilliant — if not in intention then certainly in effect. The president is responding to a claim of fact not by … [ Read more ]

Author: Bret Stephens | Source: Time (February 21, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Journalism, News | Media | Publishing, Politics & Public Policy, Trump

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisladd/2017/07/20/why-republicans-cannot-replace-the-aca-or-accomplish-anything-else/#36aca9152776

Author: Chris Ladd | Source: Forbes (July 20, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy

Author Mugambi Jouet dissects the causes of deep chasms within American society from an outsider’s viewpoint.

Author: Mugambi Jouet | Source: Knolwedge@Wharton (July 26, 2017) | Subjects: America, Articles & Links, Culture, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

Why are economically struggling blue collar voters rejecting a party that offers to expand public safety net programs? The reality is that the bulk of needy white voters are not interested in the public safety net. They want to restore their access to an older safety net, one much more generous, dignified, and stable than the public system – the one most well-employed voters still … [ Read more ]

Author: Chris Ladd | Source: Forbes (March 13, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Health & Medicine, Politics & Public Policy

The Republican Party has changed since 2005. It has become the vehicle for white identity politics. In 2005 only six percent of Republicans felt that whites faced “a great deal” of discrimination, the same number of Democrats who felt this. By 2016, the percentage of Republicans who felt this had tripled.

Recent surveys suggest that roughly 47 percent of Republicans are what you might call conservative … [ Read more ]

Author: David Brooks | Source: The New York Times (August 29, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Race Relations, Trump

Our national political polarization is by now so well established that the only real debate is over the nature of our cultural, political, and religious conflict. Are we in the midst of a more or less conventional culture war? Are we, as Dennis Prager and others argue, fighting a kind of “cold” civil war? Or are we facing something else entirely?

I’d argue that we face … [ Read more ]

Author: David French | Source: National Review (June 8, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

To understand why Trump’s Carrier stunt succeeded, it’s worth turning to a 1964 political science classic, Murray Edelman’s The Symbolic Uses of Politics. The takeaway lesson is that in politics, clear symbolic actions are often more important than results (which are often ambiguous or unclear).

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Edelman’s foundational point is that most people don’t pay close attention to the details of policy, and the news media does … [ Read more ]

Author: Lee Drutman | Source: Vox (December 19, 2016) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Trump

Political scientist Alexander George Theodoridis, an assistant professor at the University of California, Merced, is an expert on the hyper-polarized climate. He wrote in Scientific American, “My own research repeatedly shows that partisanship for many Americans today takes the form of a visceral, even subconscious, attachment to a party group.”

The consequences are that politicians are rewarded by their base for obstructionism, while punished for working … [ Read more ]

Author: Philip Perry | Source: Big Think (June 6, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

[Lakoff] understands that the way to get at people’s political opinions is by talking about values, rather than specific arguments about specific issues. He believes conservatives are much better at this than liberals and have been for a very long time. They have a much better track record of crafting political appeals by way of the appropriate value statements for their audience.

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Lakoff’s core finding revolves … [ Read more ]

Authors: Daphne White, George Lakoff | Source: Berkeleyside (May 2, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior, Values

In 2009, I helped sketch out a marketing campaign for an internet personality and blogger named Tucker Max. With a very limited advertising budget available for the independent movie he had written and produced, we had few options for getting the word out.

Maybe it was crazy but my thinking was that one of the best ways to get young men to go see a movie … [ Read more ]

Author: Ryan Holiday | Source: Observer (February 17, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior

Since the election of Donald Trump, there’s been no shortage of theories as to why America’s social contract no longer seems to work—why the United States feels so divided and dysfunctional. Some have focused on how hyper-partisanship has dismantled traditional checks and balances on public decision-making, how Barack Obama’s rise to power exacerbated the racist tendencies of embittered reactionaries, and how former churchgoers have embraced … [ Read more ]

Author: Jonathan Kay | Source: The Atlantic (July 17, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, International, Politics & Public Policy, Taxation

A healthy society balances the power of respected governments in the public sector with both responsible businesses in the private sector and robust communities in what I call the plural sector — the clubs, religions, community hospitals, foundations, NGOs, and cooperatives with which so many of us engage. The plural sector, although the least recognized of the three, is large and diverse. Many of us … [ Read more ]

Author: Henry Mintzberg | Source: Harvard Business Review (HBR) (March2017) | Subjects: America, Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

Author Tom Nichols argues that people are angry at journalists for giving them what they want: pared-down stories tailored to them.

Authors: Brian Bethune, Tom Nichols | Source: Maclean’s (March 20, 2017) | Subjects: America, Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, News | Media | Publishing, Politics & Public Policy

Minimum-wage jobs are physically demanding, have unpredictable schedules, and pay so meagerly that workers can’t save up enough to move on.

Author: Barbara Ehrenreich | Source: The Atlantic (January 13, 2014) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Economics | Economy, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

We can identify four “turnings” that each last about 20 years — the length of a generation. Think of these as recurring seasons, starting with spring and ending with winter. In every turning, a new generation is born and each older generation ages into its next phase of life.

Author: Neil Howe | Source: The Washington Post (February 24, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, History, Politics & Public Policy, Sociology | Anthropology

Some have viewed conspiracy theories as a particular affectation of the American right […] Modern researchers, however, challenge the view that conspiracies are an exclusively rightwing feature, seeing such theories as a kind of magical thinking that allows people from all walks of life and political persuasions to cope with complex emotions, often brought on by an inexplicable event.

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The view that people believe in conspiracies … [ Read more ]

Author: Paul Ratner | Source: Big Think (March 19, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior

“The notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former. A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds.” – Simone Weil

Nowhere do we muddle these two notions more liberally than in our treatment of democracy and its foundational principle of equality — a basic right to be conferred … [ Read more ]

Authors: C.S. Lewis, Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (November 29, 2016) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy

Perspective from the right on Trump’s political challenge for the left

Author: David Frum | Source: The Atlantic (February 6, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Trump

Rex Tillerson may have represented the last gasp of a certain kind of moderate Republican thinking about the world.

Author: Peter Beinart | Source: The Atlantic (March 15, 2018) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, Politics & Public Policy