When the Christian faith is politicized, churches become repositories not of grace but of grievances, places where tribal identities are reinforced, where fears are nurtured, and where aggression and nastiness are sacralized. The result is not only wounding the nation; it’s having a devastating impact on the Christian faith.
Author: Peter Wehner | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Politics & Public Policy, Religion
Because complex goods and services require much planning and coordination, management (even though it is only indirectly productive) adds a great deal of value. And managers as a class capture much of this value as pay. This makes the question of who gets to be a manager extremely consequential.
[…]
Middle managers, able to plan and coordinate production independently of elite-executive control, shared not just the … [ Read more ]
Author: Daniel Markovits | Source: The Atlantic (February2020) | Subjects: Economics | Economy, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
Author: Julie Beck | Source: The Atlantic (June 10, 2022) | Subjects: Excerpts, Family & Friends, Life & Society
Putting aside the reality that no system, including our own, is really entirely meritocratic, meritocracies may be fairer and more efficient than some alternatives. But fair in an absolute sense? Think about it. A meritocracy is a system in which the people who are the luckiest in their health and genetic endowment; luckiest in terms of family support, encouragement, and, probably, income; luckiest in their … [ Read more ]
Author: Ben Bernanke | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Economics | Economy, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
As the Republican Party evolves from a party focused on individual liberty and limits on government power to a party that more fully embraces government control of the economy and morality, it is reversing many of its previous stances on free speech in public universities, in public education, and in private corporations. Driven by a combination of partisan animosity and public fear, it is embracing … [ Read more ]
Author: David French | Source: The Atlantic (April 11, 2022) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Excerpts, Freedom | Liberty, Politics & Public Policy
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
Cynicism leads to acceptance of the previously unacceptable.
Author: David Frum | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
William Swann, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, coined the term [identity fusion] in 2009 while studying theories of individual identity. Once fused with a group or leader, he noticed, followers seem tied to them in such a way that things are true because the leader said them. Dystopian as that may seem, it can be a coping mechanism: Orienting your sense … [ Read more ]
Author: James Hamblin | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Psychology | Behavior, Sociology | Anthropology
There are some people who, when their past is threatened, get frightened of losing everything they thought they had, and perhaps everything they thought they were as well.
Author: John le Carré | Source: The Atlantic | Subject: Psychology | Behavior
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
Five key fallacies and pitfalls have affected public-health messaging, as well as media coverage, and have played an outsize role in derailing an effective pandemic response. These problems were deepened by the ways that we—the public—developed to cope with a dreadful situation under great uncertainty.
Risk Compensation
One of the most important problems undermining the pandemic response has been the mistrust and paternalism that some public-health agencies … [ Read more ]
Author: Zeynep Tufekci | Source: The Atlantic (February 26, 2021) | Subjects: Excerpts, Health & Medicine, Politics & Public Policy
Our concept of politics, descended from antiquity, is that society can peaceably settle its differences of opinion and interests. For politics to properly play its becalming role, citizens must agree on rules. Discussion, persuasion, and a willingness to accept temporary defeat are the political means by which a society adjudicates its inevitable conflicts. When a society discards politics, violence assumes its place.
Author: Franklin Foer | Source: The Atlantic | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
At one point in time, conservatism was this idea of liberty, of rugged individualism. But at the same time, there was this deep sense about responsibility. It was both liberty and responsibility. You could swing your arm, but you certainly weren’t going to swing your arm to where it was going to connect with somebody else’s nose. What we’ve gotten to today is: I’m going … [ Read more ]
Author: Chad Mayes | Source: The Atlantic | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
The point of protest is rarely to swing a single race, however momentous that race may be. It is to change the terms of political debate, and ultimately to change society itself. And indeed, protest has always foreshadowed the most radical shifts in American history. Protest calls attention to problems with the status quo—and often spells political doom for those who have upheld it.
Author: Daniel Q. Gillion | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, it will set off tectonic shifts in the American political landscape not seen since the civil-rights movement—or perhaps even the Civil War.
Author: Jeffrey Rosen | Source: The Atlantic (June2006) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Law | Legal, Politics & Public Policy
Americans readily tolerate inequality of outcomes, accepting that it’s a necessary by-product of how we reward the hard work, initiative, and creativity that underpin our much envied economy. But we should not accept inequality of opportunity.
Author: Ray Boshara | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: America, Economics | Economy, International, Politics & Public Policy
By the close of the 1990s the United States had become more unequal than at any other time since the dawn of the New Deal—indeed, it was the most unequal society in the advanced democratic world. The top 20 percent of households earned 56 percent of the nation’s income and commanded an astonishing 83 percent of the nation’s wealth. Even more striking, the top one … [ Read more ]
Author: Ray Boshara | Source: The Atlantic (January2003) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Economics | Economy, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy
Inequality, an issue politicians talked about hesitantly, if at all, a decade ago, is now a central focus of candidates in both parties. The terms of the debate, however, are about individuals and classes: the elite versus the middle, the 1 percent versus the 99 percent. That’s fair enough. But the language currently used to describe inequality doesn’t capture the way it is manifesting geographically. … [ Read more ]
Author: Phillip Longman | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: America, Economics | Economy, History, International
The will to power still passes through hatred on the right and virtue on the left.
Author: George Packer | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Concepts, Politics & Public Policy, Power, Psychology | Behavior
Orthodoxy is also enforced by social pressure, nowhere more intensely than on Twitter, where the specter of being shamed or “canceled” produces conformity as much as the prospect of adding to your tribe of followers does. This pressure can be more powerful than a party or state, because it speaks in the name of the people and in the language of moral outrage, against which … [ Read more ]
Author: George Packer | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Life & Society, Social Media