democracy 
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2/21/2021
Don't Defend Democracy With Half-Truths About the Past
by Brook Thomas
Although the Capitol riots raised deep concern about the rule of law, there is a deeper challenge ahead of the nation: to understand and change the undemocratic aspects of our foundational law and refuse half-measures in the name of unity.
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SOURCE: Open Democracy
2/9/2021
Trump’s Impeachment Trial Already Shows How Far US Democracy Has Been Undermined
by Jim Sleeper
Institutional deadlock in Congress indicates a deeper and far more worrying threat to rational debate among American citizens.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
2/15/2021
The Founders Were Wrong About Democracy
by David Frum
The conservative commentator writes that the framers' concern with broad populist movements shouldn't overshadowing the greater damage done to democracy by a minority faction that controls key institutions and follows its own fickle self-interest.
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2/14/2021
History, Evidence and the Ethics of Belief
by Guy Lancaster
Untrammelled freedom of belief has been enshrined as an American civic virtue. The nation, democracy, and possibly the planet are imperiled without a collective commitment to respect belief only to the extent available evidence supports it.
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SOURCE: New York Review of Books
2/3/2021
The Case for a Third Reconstruction
by Manisha Sinha
During their brief hold on power, so-called "Radical Republicans" used their power to build multiracial democracy in the South and punish white supremacist terrorism. We face the same challenges today and must learn from and complete the work begun in Reconstruction and renewed by the modern Civil Rights movement.
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SOURCE: New York Magazine
1/31/2021
All the Lies They Told Us About the Filibuster
Columnist Jonathan Chait considers the politics of the Senate filibuster and Adam Jentleson's new book "Kill Switch," concluding that much of the mythology of the filibuster as a check on knee-jerk legislation is bogus.
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SOURCE: Africa Is A Country
1/20/2021
Reflections On An Imploding Empire
by Russell Rickford
Progressive dissidents must meet the moment of Biden's inauguration by not settling for what liberal politicians offer on economic justice, human rights, environment, labor, and health.
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1/17/2021
The Free Press and Democracy in a "Murder the Media" Age
by Wendy Melillo
Journalism as a profession needs to embrace its historical role as a guardian of democracy and refuse to let objectivity work as a shield for authoritarianism; authoritarians won't accept a free press anyway.
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SOURCE: Slate
1/11/2021
The Only Way to Save American Democracy Now
by Richard R. Hasen
"We need bold changes to deal with the threat to democracy from an authoritarian wing of the Republican Party that appeared ready to abet Trump’s stealing of the election, as well as the separate problem that the Republican Party can continue to consistently win elections with minority support thanks to backward American election rules we have in place."
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/8/2021
How to Ensure This Never Happens Again
by Beverly Gage and Emily Bazelon
A menu of democratic reform initiatives ranging from strictly defining the electoral vote process to abolishing the electoral college: reforms needed to stop the temptation to undemocratic rule and authoritarianism.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
1/7/2020
What Trump and His Mob Taught the World About America
by Anne Applebaum
"The images from Washington that are going out around the world are far more damaging to America’s reputation as a stable democracy than the images of young people protesting the Vietnam War several decades ago, and they are far more disturbing to outsiders than the riots and protests of last summer."
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
1/4/2021
We Can’t Let Our Elections Be This Vulnerable Again
by Richard L. Hasen
2020 is a warning: America needs to remove opportunities for political pressure, discretionary action, and deception in the counting and recording of votes.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
12/16/2020
The Republican Party Now Has More in Common with the Southern Minority of 1860
by Jeremy Tewell
Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address warned of "the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement" as a path to ruin; the party he led to prominence is now embodying his warning.
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SOURCE: New York Times
12/13/2020
Why Getting the Most Votes Matters
Times Editor Jesse Wegman examines the unique absence of majoritarian principle in the election of the American president and argues it goes against the most basic understanding of political fairness.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
12/13/2020
Why Jimmy Lai and Hong Kong’s Democracy Advocates Need Biden’s Public Support Right Now
by Natan Sharansky
A former Soviet political prisoner and human rights advocate calls on the Biden transition team to make clear that the new president will not accept China's repression of democracy in Hong Kong.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
12/2/2020
Minority Rule Cannot Last in America. It Never Has
by Kenneth Owen
When parties commit themselves to minority rule, the backlash can be severe, as has been shown repeatedly when ruling parties stood in the way of popular will.
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SOURCE: New York Times
11/29/2020
Trump Looms Large Now, but Maybe Not Forever
by Steve Inskeep
NPR's Steve Inskeep reflects on the prospect that historical distance will make Trump and Trumpism smaller (and not all-consuming) parts of a story about American society struggling with bigger questions of political, economic and social equality that became increasingly contentious during the Obama era.
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SOURCE: The Nation
11/17/2020
American Democracy Was Never Supposed to Work
by Richard Kreitner
"Merely ousting Trump is not enough without addressing more fundamental weaknesses in our political system, especially an outdated Constitution that continues to serve a minority of wealthy and white citizens and to curb any movements that might threaten their wealth and power."
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SOURCE: Boston Review
11/19/2020
Against Returning to Normal
by David Walsh
Liberal pleas to return to a "normal" defined by bipartisan consensus ignore the long legacy of ideological conflict and the pursuit of division as a political strategy by the conservative movement.
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SOURCE: The Yale Review
11/15/2020
The Wondrous Banality of Democracy
by John Witt
A professor of law and legal history volunteered as a ballot counting observer in Pennsylvania and offers a reflection on the unspectacular nature of democracy in action.
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