Demagogues assume the proportions of religious leaders, but without the moral instruction. Through a process of simplification, they purport to tell their followers what happened and who is responsible. In short, they provide cosmology, not for the purpose of enlightenment, but for the opposite — benightedness.
Author: Neal Gabler | Subjects: Politics & Public Policy, Religion
I used to think of political identity as something more solid. I now think of political identity as like water that’s always going somewhere, that needs to go somewhere, but where it goes depends on the lay of the land, the rock formations that stand in its way.
Author: Arlie Russell Hochschild | Source: The Atlantic | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
The neglect of the political nature or context of war is a common cause of strategic failures – as well as a common flaw in theories that often contribute to those failures.
Author: H.R. McMaster | Subjects: Military | War | Peace, Politics & Public Policy
War is the continuation of politics with other means.
Author: Carl von Clausewitz | Subjects: Military | War | Peace, Politics & Public Policy
This view of us [America] versus the outside world is mostly about foreign policy; it is spectacularly narrow and crushingly white. This view is predicated on the fairy tale, made possible by the shared and agreed-upon reality in which we are not subject to the same laws as the rest of the world, whether those laws are scientific or international. It bleeds into how we … [ Read more ]
Author: Josh Berthume | Subjects: America, International, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
Yet how was it possible that 10 per cent could effectively master and control 90 per cent of the population? They bribed them; they deceived them; they created internal rivalries; they consoled them for their lack of power by weaving myths of origin and identity.
Author: Peter Ackroyd | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Sociology | Anthropology
The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied… but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is … [ Read more ]
Author: John Berger | Subjects: Economics | Economy, Life & Society, Material Possessions, Politics & Public Policy
The most underappreciated part of foreign policy is dealing with flawed partners.
Author: Ben Rhodes | Subjects: Foreign Policy, International, Politics & Public Policy
I dream of a world where the truth is what shapes people’s politics, rather than politics shaping what people think is true.
Author: Neil deGrasse Tyson | Subjects: Concepts, Intelligence | Knowledge, Politics & Public Policy
Worshiping at the altar of the individual ignores the important role of the collective.
Author: Jeff Blum | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
I find that a lot of anti-socialist sentiment boils down to a basic belief that people are lazy and won’t do good in the world or work hard unless they are suffering. I believe the opposite. I think most people would do amazing things if they weren’t in dire straits constantly.
Author: Jessica Grace | Subjects: Economics | Economy, Politics & Public Policy
Even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction – purpose and dignity – that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, … [ Read more ]
Author: Robert F. Kennedy | Subjects: Economics | Economy, Life & Society, Material Possessions, Politics & Public Policy
Any nation with a great unemployment wave becomes a seedbed for -isms.
Author: Harrison Jones | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
There is one sentiment, I think, that links the people who were once part of the center-right — the anti-communist movement in Poland or Reaganism or Thatcherism — and who began to change in a different direction over the past decade or so: disappointment.
These are very often people who are disappointed, and they are almost always disappointed with their society. Whether it’s the superficiality … [ Read more ]
Author: Anne Applebaum | Source: Vox | Subjects: Politics & Public Policy, Sociology | Anthropology
The right is starry eyed about the market but coldly realistic about the limitations of government. The left is starry eyed about government but coldly realistic about the limitations of the market. As Churchill once said about democracy, it’s the worst possible system except for all the others. Both the market and the government are deeply flawed tools. But they are all we have.
Authors: Joan C. Williams, Ro Khanna | Source: Harvard Business Review (HBR) | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
We don’t need to reinvent capitalism. We just need to practice it. That means that corporations that embrace market mechanisms and decry government intervention in the good times should not change the rules when times turn tough. Privatizing profits while socializing risks isn’t capitalism: It’s rigged roulette. Equally important, practicing capitalism does not mean insisting on special treatment from government that benefits shareholders at the … [ Read more ]
Authors: Joan C. Williams, Ro Khanna | Source: Harvard Business Review (HBR) | Subjects: Business, Economics | Economy, Politics & Public Policy
Every business takes from the environment. We get access to resources, roads, infrastructure, and education. So it’s only right that we have a mind-set that we give back, we replenish as well as consume. And we use our voice to try to make a difference.
Author: Jeremy Darroch | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Business, Economics | Economy, Politics & Public Policy
I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions, but … laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with … [ Read more ]
Author: Thomas Jefferson | Source: The Atlantic | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. You built a factory out there? Good for you.
But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces … [ Read more ]
Author: Elizabeth Warren | Subjects: Economics | Economy, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
Whenever a social system — a company, or in this case a larger group of mainstream institutions — is disrupted, and the leaders have not developed an inner capacity for curiosity, compassion, and courage, then you will tend to see a closing of the mind and the heart, and a fanatical expression of will. You will see the amplification of prejudice, an increase in public … [ Read more ]
Author: Otto Scharmer | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Sociology | Anthropology