by jpitney | Jun 30, 2022 | Civility, Congress, Deliberation, Democracy, House of Representatives
From the text: One of my Democratic colleagues said to me recently that he looked forward to the day when he and I could disagree again. And believe me, I share that sentiment. Because when we can disagree again about substance and policy, that will mean that our...
by jpitney | Jun 13, 2022 | Democracy, Russia, Ukraine
Nicole Bibbins Sedaca at the Bush Institute: Vladimir Putin’s brutal, unprovoked, and unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine is an affront to the basic rights of the Ukrainian people and on democracy itself. But frighteningly, the ruthlessness behind the indiscriminate...
by jpitney | Jun 8, 2022 | Democracy, Reagan
Forty years ago today, President Reagan spoke to the British Parliament: No, democracy is not a fragile flower. Still it needs cultivating. If the rest of this century is to witness the gradual growth of freedom and democratic ideals, we must take actions to assist...
by jpitney | Mar 14, 2022 | California Politics, Deliberation, Democracy, Mexico
Nathan Gardels at Noema: Until 2000, the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) won every presidential election for some 70 years. This led the Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa to mock Mexico as “the perfect dictatorship,” which perpetuated one-party rule through...
by jpitney | Dec 13, 2021 | China, Democracy
Nathan Gardels at Noemi: If Biden’s aim is to challenge China’s one-party system that has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and modernized its infrastructure in record time — while the likes of democratic India still lack toilets for 50% of its population 70...
by jpitney | Dec 6, 2021 | Declaration of Independence, Democracy, George Washington
Nathan Gardels at Noema: If the freedom to expose historical wrongs ends up delegitimizing the common American story of the enlightened founding of a constitutional republic by deconstructing it into the mere bad faith of slaveholders, then the very conditions for...
