Showing titles in Democracy

Jacob Javits of New York is the first United States senator to become fully automated,” the Chicago Tribune announced in 1962 from the Republican state convention in Buffalo, where an electronic Javits spat out slips of paper with answers to questions about everything from Cuba’s missiles...

Smedley D. Butler (1881–1940), the most decorated officer in U.S. military history, including two Medals of Honor, wrote a searing critique in War is a Racket. Drawing from his service in conflicts from the Spanish-American War to World War I, he exposed how wars enriched corporations, bankers, and industrialists while soldiers and civilians bore the devastating costs. With unflinching candor, Butler revealed the profiteering motives behind global conflicts, delivering a timeless call for peace.

The elites still can't believe Donald Trump won or that Britain voted for Brexit. But what’s next for the populist revolution and for the people who believe in it? Fox News host and former government insider Steve Hilton shows how populism can be a positive force for improving lives, with...

Too many Americans have been disenfranchised or faced needless barriers to vote. Part of the blame falls on the Constitution, which does not contain an affirmative right to vote. The Supreme Court has made matters worse by failing to protect voting rights and limiting Congress's ability to do so. The time has come for voters to take action and push for an amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee this right for all. Richard Hasen argues that American democracy can and should do better in assuring that all eligible voters can cast a meaningful vote that will be fairly counted.

P.J. O’Rourke began writing funny things in 1960s underground newspapers, became editor-in-chief of National Lampoon, then spent 20 years reporting for Rolling Stone and The Atlantic Monthly as the world’s only trouble spot humorist, going to wars, riots, rebellions, and other "Holidays in Hell” in more than 40 countries.

Estas son las memorias de Martin Baron como director del Washington Post, una mirada profunda y autorizada para comprender el deterioro de la democracia estadounidense en los últimos años, el papel de la prensa y los equilibrios de poder entre el mundo empresarial y político.

Hackers have a bad reputation, as shady deployers of bots and destroyers of infrastructure. In Coding Democracy, Maureen Webb offers another view. Hackers, she argues, can be vital disruptors. Hacking is becoming a practice, an ethos, and a metaphor for a new wave of activism in which ordinary citizens are inventing new forms of distributed, decentralized democracy for a digital era. Confronted with concentrations of power, mass surveillance, and authoritarianism enabled by new technology, the hacking movement is trying to "build out" democracy into cyberspace.

In this international history of Reconstruction, Don Doyle chronicles the world events inspired by the Civil War. Between 1865 and 1870, France withdrew from Mexico, Russia sold Alaska to the US, and Britain proclaimed the new state of Canada. British workers demanded more voting rights, Spain toppled Queen Isabella II and ended slavery in its Caribbean colonies, Cubans rose against Spanish rule, France overthrew Napoleon III, and the kingdom of Pope Pius IX fell before the Italian Risorgimento. 

Noch nie gab es in der Bundesrepublik so viele und so strenge Gesetze zur Regulierung und Einschränkung der Meinungsfreiheit wie heute. In den vergangenen zehn Jahren ist eine Vielzahl neuer Paragrafen hinzugekommen, um bestimmte Äußerungen zu verbieten. Ronen Steinke zeigt auf, wo neuerdings die Grenzen der Meinungsfreiheit verlaufen, auch im digitalen Raum. Gerade in der gegenwärtigen volatilen Lage, so argumentiert der promovierte Jurist, sollte das Land mehr Meinungsfreiheit wagen, anstatt zu glauben, man überzeuge Menschen, indem man ihnen den Mund verbietet.

Since the end of World War II, democracies typically fell apart by coup d'état or through force. Today, however, they are increasingly eroding at the hands of democratically elected incumbents, who seize control by slowly chipping away at democratic institutions. To better understand these developments, this book examines the role of personalist political parties, or parties that exist primarily to further their leader's career as opposed to promote a specific policy platform. 

The chaotic events leading up to Mitt Romney's defeat in the 2012 election indicated how far the Republican Party had rocketed rightward away from the center of public opinion. Republicans in Congress threatened to shut down the government and force a U.S. debt default. Tea Party activists mounted primary challenges against Republican officeholders who appeared to exhibit too much pragmatism or independence. Moderation and compromise were dirty words in the Republican presidential debates. The GOP, it seemed, had suddenly become a party of ideological purity. Except this development is not new at all.

Phocion (402-318 BCE) won Athens's highest public office by direct democratic election an unmatched forty-five times and was officially honored as a "Useful Citizen." A student at Plato's Academy, Phocion gained influence and power during a time when Athens faced multiple crises stemming from Macedonia's emergence as an international power under Philip II and his son Alexander the Great. Following Athens's defeat by Macedonia, Phocion unsuccessfully sought mild terms of surrender. Oligarchy was imposed on democratic Athens, and more than twelve thousand "undesirable" Athenians were exiled.

From award-winning journalist Jack Shenker, The Egyptians is the essential book about Egypt and radical politics. In early 2011 Cairo's Tahrir Square briefly commanded the attention of the world. Half a decade later, the international media has largely moved on from Egypt's explosive cycles of revolution and counter-revolution - but the Arab world's most populous nation remains as volatile as ever, its turmoil intimately bound up with forms of authoritarian power and grassroots resistance that stretch right across the globe.

“You don’t create societies by burning things down, You create societies by building things.” From the former faith adviser to President Obama comes a fresh manifesto for those who seek to promote positive change and build a more diverse and just democracy The goal of social change work is...

Socialists Don’t Sleep is about all the sneaky ways the secular left has pressed socialism into American politics and life - and why Christians are the only ones who can stop it. Socialists Don’t Sleep tells how America has gone from a country of rights coming from God, not government, to a country that embraces socialism - where the government’s now expected to pretty much provide from cradle to grave. Cheryl K. Chumley, award-winning journalist and contributing editor to The Washington Times, explains how to return the country to its glory days.

Millions of American families have turned to The Book of Virtues and The Moral Compass by William J. Bennett for moral guidance in troubled times. Our Sacred Honor offers inspiration and instruction as well -- this time of a particularly American sort. In Our Sacred Honor, Bennett has collected...

Identity Crisis takes listeners from the bruising primaries to an election night whose outcome defied the predictions of the pollsters and pundits. The book shows how fundamental characteristics of the nation and its politics - the state of the economy, the Obama presidency, and the demographics of the political parties - combined with the candidates' personalities and rhetoric to produce one of the most unexpected presidencies in history.

The dazzling, inimitable Molly Ivins is back, with her own personal Hall of Fame of America’s most amazing and outlandish politicians–the wicked, the wise, the witty, and the witless–drawn from more than twenty years of reporting on the folks who attempt to run our government (in some...

AN INSTANT #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER A HILL TIMES BEST BOOK 2024 Award-winning author and broadcast journalist Carol Off digs deep into six words whose meanings have been distorted and weaponized in recent years—including democracy, freedom and truth—and asks whether we can reclaim their value...

Propelled by the belief that government has slipped out of the hands of ordinary citizens, a surging wave of populism is destabilizing democracies around the world. As John Matsusaka reveals in Let the People Rule, this belief is based in fact. Over the past century, while democratic governments have become more efficient, they have also become more disconnected from the people they purport to represent. The solution Matsusaka advances is familiar but surprisingly underused: direct democracy, in the form of referendums.