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The Demon In Democracy
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Book Synopsis The Demon in Democracy by : Ryszard Legutko
Download or read book The Demon in Democracy written by Ryszard Legutko and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ryszard Legutko lived and suffered under communism for decades—and he fought with the Polish anti-communist movement to abolish it. Having lived for two decades under a liberal democracy, however, he has discovered that these two political systems have a lot more in common than one might think. They both stem from the same historical roots in early modernity, and accept similar presuppositions about history, society, religion, politics, culture, and human nature. In The Demon in Democracy, Legutko explores the shared objectives between these two political systems, and explains how liberal democracy has over time lurched towards the same goals as communism, albeit without Soviet style brutality. Both systems, says Legutko, reduce human nature to that of the common man, who is led to believe himself liberated from the obligations of the past. Both the communist man and the liberal democratic man refuse to admit that there exists anything of value outside the political systems to which they pledged their loyalty. And both systems refuse to undertake any critical examination of their ideological prejudices.
Book Synopsis The Demon in Democracy by : Ryszard Legutko
Download or read book The Demon in Democracy written by Ryszard Legutko and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ryszard Legutko lived and suffered under communism for decades—and he fought with the Polish ant-communist movement to abolish it. Having lived for two decades under a liberal democracy, however, he has discovered that these two political systems have a lot more in common than one might think. They both stem from the same historical roots in early modernity, and accept similar presuppositions about history, society, religion, politics, culture, and human nature. In The Demon in Democracy, Legutko explores the shared objectives between these two political systems, and explains how liberal democracy has over time lurched towards the same goals as communism, albeit without Soviet style brutalality. Both systems, says Legutko, reduce human nature to that of the common man, who is led to believe himself liberated from the obligations of the past. Both the communist man and the liberal democratic man refuse to admit that there exists anything of value outside the political systems to which they pledged their loyalty. And both systems refuse to undertake any critical examination of their ideological prejudices.
Book Synopsis The Demons of Liberal Democracy by : Adrian Pabst
Download or read book The Demons of Liberal Democracy written by Adrian Pabst and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-07-12 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberals blame the global retreat of liberal democracy on globalisation and authoritarian leaders. Only liberalism, so they assume, can defend democratic rule against multinationals or populists at home and abroad. In this provocative book, Adrian Pabst contends that liberal democracy is illiberal and undemocratic – intolerant about the values of ordinary people while concentrating power and wealth in the hands of unaccountable elites. Under the influence of contemporary liberalism, democracy is sliding into oligarchy, demagogy and anarchy. Liberals, far from defending open markets and free speech, promote monopolies such as the new tech giants that undermine competition and democratic debate. Liberal individualism has eroded the social bonds and civic duties on which democracy depends for trust and cooperation. To banish liberal democracy’s demons, Pabst proposes radical ideas for economic democracy, a politics of persuasion and a better balance of personal freedom with social solidarity. This book’s defence of democratic politics against both liberals and populists will speak to all readers trying to understand our age of upheaval.
Book Synopsis The Cunning of Freedom by : Ryszard Legutko
Download or read book The Cunning of Freedom written by Ryszard Legutko and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book has two currents. The first is an analysis of the three concepts of freedom that are called, respectively, negative, positive, and inner. Negative freedom is defined as an absence of coercion, positive freedom as an ability to rule oneself and others, inner freedom as being oneself; that is, being the author of one’s decisions. Each concept is analyzed both in terms of its development in the history of ideas and in terms of its internal logic. The major problem of negative freedom is to find widely accepted rules according to which this freedom can be distributed. Positive freedom’s major difficulty is to define what constitutes a free person. The greatest dilemma with inner freedom is how to correlate it with the proper interpretation of the human self. The book advances the thesis, and this constitutes the other current of its narrative—that we have been witnessing the advent of a new form of despotism, much of it being the effect of liberalism’s dominant position. Precisely because it took a reductionist position, liberalism has impoverished our view of freedom and, consequently, our notion of human nature with its political, moral, and metaphysical dimensions.
Book Synopsis Strong Democracy by : Benjamin Barber
Download or read book Strong Democracy written by Benjamin Barber and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One of the chosen few: an enduring contribution to democratic thought."—Bruce Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science, Yale University
Book Synopsis The Devil in History by : Vladimir Tismaneanu
Download or read book The Devil in History written by Vladimir Tismaneanu and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2014-03-14 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Devil in History is a provocative analysis of the relationship between communism and fascism. Reflecting the author’s personal experiences within communist totalitarianism, this is a book about political passions, radicalism, utopian ideals, and their catastrophic consequences in the twentieth century’s experiments in social engineering. Vladimir Tismaneanu brilliantly compares communism and fascism as competing, sometimes overlapping, and occasionally strikingly similar systems of political totalitarianism. He examines the inherent ideological appeal of these radical, revolutionary political movements, the visions of salvation and revolution they pursued, the value and types of charisma of leaders within these political movements, the place of violence within these systems, and their legacies in contemporary politics. The author discusses thinkers who have shaped contemporary understanding of totalitarian movements—people such as Hannah Arendt, Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin, Albert Camus, François Furet, Tony Judt, Ian Kershaw, Leszek Kolakowski, Richard Pipes, and Robert C. Tucker. As much a theoretical analysis of the practical philosophies of Marxism-Leninism and Fascism as it is a political biography of particular figures, this book deals with the incarnation of diabolically nihilistic principles of human subjugation and conditioning in the name of presumably pure and purifying goals. Ultimately, the author claims that no ideological commitment, no matter how absorbing, should ever prevail over the sanctity of human life. He comes to the conclusion that no party, movement, or leader holds the right to dictate to the followers to renounce their critical faculties and to embrace a pseudo-miraculous, a mystically self-centered, delusional vision of mandatory happiness.
Book Synopsis Crisis of the Two Constitutions by : Charles R. Kesler
Download or read book Crisis of the Two Constitutions written by Charles R. Kesler and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American politics grows embittered because it is increasingly torn between two rival constitutions, two opposed cultures, two contrary ways of life. American conservatives rally around the founders’ Constitution, as amended and as grounded in the natural and divine rights and duties of the Declaration of Independence. American liberals herald their “living Constitution,” a term that implies that the original is dead or superseded, and that the fundamental political imperative is constant change or transformation (as President Obama called it) toward a more and more perfect social democracy ruled by a Woke elite. Crisis of the Two Constitutions details how we got to and what is at stake in our increasingly divided America. It takes controversial stands on matters political and scholarly, describing the political genius of America’s founders and their efforts to shape future generations through a constitutional culture that included immigration, citizenship, and educational policies. Then it turns to the attempted progressive refounding of America, tracing its accelerating radicalism from the New Deal to the 1960s’ New Left to today’s unhappy campus nihilists. Finally, the volume appraises American conservatives’ efforts, so far unavailing despite many famous victories, to revive the founders’ Constitution and moral common sense. From Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump, what have conservatives learned and where should they go from here? Along the way, Charles R. Kesler argues with critics on the left and right, and refutes fashionable doctrines including relativism, multiculturalism, critical race theory, and radical traditionalism, providing in effect a one-volume guide to the increasingly influential Claremont school of conservative thought by one of its most engaged, and engaging, thinkers.
Book Synopsis Democracy and Education by : John Dewey
Download or read book Democracy and Education written by John Dewey and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 1916 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: . Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.
Book Synopsis Suicide of the West by : James Burnham
Download or read book Suicide of the West written by James Burnham and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2014-11-25 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Burnham’s 1964 classic, Suicide of the West, remains a startling account on the nature of the modern era. It offers a profound, in depth analysis of what is happening in the world today by putting into focus the intangible, often vague doctrine of American liberalism. It parallels the loosely defined liberal ideology rampant in American government and institutions, with the flow, ebb, growth, climax and the eventual decline and death of both ancient and modern civilizations. Its author maintains that western suicidal tendencies lie not so much in the lack of resources or military power, but through an erosion of intellectual, moral, and spiritual factors abundant in modern western society and the mainstay of liberal psychology. Devastating in its relentless dissection of the liberal syndrome, this book will lead many liberals to painful self-examination, buttress the thinking conservative’s viewpoint, and incite others, no doubt, to infuriation. None can ignore it.
Download or read book World on Fire written by Amy Chua and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2004-01-06 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The reigning consensus holds that the combination of free markets and democracy would transform the third world and sweep away the ethnic hatred and religious zealotry associated with underdevelopment. In this revelatory investigation of the true impact of globalization, Yale Law School professor Amy Chua explains why many developing countries are in fact consumed by ethnic violence after adopting free market democracy. Chua shows how in non-Western countries around the globe, free markets have concentrated starkly disproportionate wealth in the hands of a resented ethnic minority. These “market-dominant minorities” – Chinese in Southeast Asia, Croatians in the former Yugoslavia, whites in Latin America and South Africa, Indians in East Africa, Lebanese in West Africa, Jews in post-communist Russia – become objects of violent hatred. At the same time, democracy empowers the impoverished majority, unleashing ethnic demagoguery, confiscation, and sometimes genocidal revenge. She also argues that the United States has become the world’s most visible market-dominant minority, a fact that helps explain the rising tide of anti-Americanism around the world. Chua is a friend of globalization, but she urges us to find ways to spread its benefits and curb its most destructive aspects.
Book Synopsis Neoliberalism's Demons by : Adam Kotsko
Download or read book Neoliberalism's Demons written by Adam Kotsko and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Adam Kotsko’s premise—that the devil and the neoliberal subject can only ever choose their own damnation—is as original as it is breathtaking.” —James Martel, author of Anarchist Prophets By both its supporters and detractors, neoliberalism is usually considered an economic policy agenda. Neoliberalism’s Demons argues that it is much more than that: a complete worldview, neoliberalism presents the competitive marketplace as the model for true human flourishing. And it has enjoyed great success: from the struggle for “global competitiveness” on the world stage down to our individual practices of self-branding and social networking, neoliberalism has transformed every aspect of our shared social life. The book explores the sources of neoliberalism’s remarkable success and the roots of its current decline. Neoliberalism’s appeal is its promise of freedom in the form of unfettered free choice. But that freedom is a trap: we have just enough freedom to be accountable for our failings, but not enough to create genuine change. If we choose rightly, we ratify our own exploitation. And if we choose wrongly, we are consigned to the outer darkness—and then demonized as the cause of social ills. By tracing the political and theological roots of the neoliberal concept of freedom, Adam Kotsko offers a fresh perspective, one that emphasizes the dynamics of race, gender, and sexuality. More than that, he accounts for the rise of right-wing populism, arguing that, far from breaking with the neoliberal model, it actually doubles down on neoliberalism’s most destructive features. “One of the most compelling critical analyses of neoliberalism I’ve yet encountered, understood holistically as an economic agenda, a moral vision, and a state mission.” —Peter Hallward, author of Badiou
Book Synopsis Homo Americanus by : Zbigniew Janowski
Download or read book Homo Americanus written by Zbigniew Janowski and published by St. Augustine's Press. This book was released on 2021-03-26 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the man who cannot be known apart from his socio-political environment? As Zbigniew Janowski asserts, one does not ask who this man is, for he does not even know himself. This man is suppressed and separated, and not by Fascism or Communism. In present-day America this has been accomplished by democracy. "Only someone shortsighted, or someone who values equality more than freedom, would deny that today's citizens enjoy little or no freedom, particularly freedom of speech, and even less the ability to express openly or publicly the opinions that are not in conformity with what the majority considers acceptable at a given moment. It may sound paradoxical to contemporary ears, but a fight against totalitarianism must also mean a fight against the expansion of democracy." Janowski all at once brazen and out of bounds states what he calls the obvious and unthinkable truth: In the United States, we are already living in a totalitarian reality. The American citizen, the Homo Americanus, is an ideological being who is no longer good or bad, reasonable or irrational, proper or improper except when measured against the objectives of the dominating egalitarian mentality that American democracy has successfully incubated. American democracy has done what other despotic regimes have likewise achieved--namely, taken hold of the individual and forced him to renounce (or forget) his greatness, pursuit of virtue and his orientation toward history and Tradition. Homo Americanus, Janowski argues, has no mind or soul and he cannot tolerate diversity and indeed he now censors himself. Democracy is not benign, and we should fear its principles come by and applied ad hoc. It is deeply troublesome that in the way democracy moves today it gives critics no real insight into any trajectory of reason behind its motion, which is erratic and unmappable. The Homo Americanus is an ideological entity whose thought and even morality are forbidden from universal abstraction. Janowski mounts the offensive against what the American holds most sacred, and he does so in order to save him. After exposing the danger and the damage done, Janowski makes another startling proposal. It is a "diseased collective mind" that is the source of this ideology, the liberal anti-perspective that presses man into the image of the Homo Americanus, and its grip can only be broken through the recovery of instinct. Homo Americanus cannot be free again until he is himself again. That is, until the shadow that belongs only to him is restored, and he is thereby no longer alienated from others. Despite the condemnation Janowski seems to be levying on the citizen of the United States, he betrays a great hope and confidence that the means to shake ourselves awake from the bad dream are nevertheless in hand. Janowski's work is the next title in St. Augustine's Press Dissident American Thought Today Series. It occupies a controversial overlapping terrain between the philosophical descriptions of liberalism as a tradition, psychology and the fundamentally influential critiques of democracy offered by Thucydides, Jefferson, Franklin, Tocqueville, Mill, Burke and more. More anecdotal than analytical, Janowski offers the contemporary proof that the reader is right to be scandalized by democracy and his or her own likeness of the Homo Americanus. Once upon a time it was the despicable Homo Sovieticus fruit of tyranny, but now we fear democratic society too might fall and all its citizens never be found again.
Book Synopsis Six Encounters with Lincoln by : Elizabeth Brown Pryor
Download or read book Six Encounters with Lincoln written by Elizabeth Brown Pryor and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the psychology, character, and leadership of the sixteenth president as evidenced by six encounters with his constituents, from an awkward meeting with Army officers on the eve of the Civil War to a White House conversation with a fierce abolitionist.
Book Synopsis Anti-science and the Assault on Democracy by : Michael J. Thompson
Download or read book Anti-science and the Assault on Democracy written by Michael J. Thompson and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Defending the role that science must play in democratic society--science defined not just in terms of technology but as a way of approaching problems and viewing the world. In this collection of original essays, experts in political science, the hard sciences, philosophy, history, and other disciplines examine contemporary anti-science trends, and make a strong case that respect for science is essential for a healthy democracy. The editors note that a contradiction lies at the heart of modern society. On the one hand, we inhabit a world increasingly dominated by science and technology. On the other, opposition to science is prevalent in many forms--from arguments against the teaching of evolution and the denial of climate change to the promotion of alternative medicine and outlandish claims about the effects of vaccinations. Adding to this grass-roots hostility toward science are academics espousing postmodern relativism, which equates the methods of science with regimes of "power-knowledge." While these cultural trends are sometimes marketed in the name of "democratic pluralism," the contributors contend that such views are actually destructive of a broader culture appropriate for a democratic society. This is especially true when facts are degraded as "fake news" and scientists are dismissed as elitists. Rather than enhancing the capacity for rational debate and critical discourse, the authors view such anti-science stances on either the right or the left as a return to premodern forms of subservience to authority and an unwillingness to submit beliefs to rational scrutiny. Beyond critiquing attitudes hostile to science, the essays in this collection put forward a positive vision for how we might better articulate the relation between science and democracy and the benefits that accrue from cultivating this relationship.
Book Synopsis The Arsenal of Democracy by : Albert J. Baime
Download or read book The Arsenal of Democracy written by Albert J. Baime and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2014 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles Detroit's dramatic transition from an automobile manufacturing center to a highly efficient producer of World War II airplanes, citing the essential role of Edsel Ford's rebellion against his father, Henry Ford.
Book Synopsis What Universities Owe Democracy by : Ronald J. Daniels
Download or read book What Universities Owe Democracy written by Ronald J. Daniels and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction -- American dreams : access, mobility, fairness -- Free minds : educating democratic citizens -- Hard facts : knowledge creation and checking power -- Purposeful pluralism : dialogue across difference on campus -- Conclusion.
Book Synopsis A Demon-Haunted Land by : Monica Black
Download or read book A Demon-Haunted Land written by Monica Black and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A Demon-Haunted Land is absorbing, gripping, and utterly fascinating... Beautifully written, without even a hint of jargon or pretension, it casts a significant and unexpected new light on the early phase of the Federal Republic of Germany’s history. Black’s analysis of the copious, largely unknown archival sources on which the book is based is unfailingly subtle and intelligent.” —Richard J. Evans, The New Republic In the aftermath of World War II, a succession of mass supernatural events swept through war-torn Germany. A messianic faith healer rose to extraordinary fame, prayer groups performed exorcisms, and enormous crowds traveled to witness apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Most strikingly, scores of people accused their neighbors of witchcraft, and found themselves in turn hauled into court on charges of defamation, assault, and even murder. What linked these events, in the wake of an annihilationist war and the Holocaust, was a widespread preoccupation with evil. While many histories emphasize Germany’s rapid transition from genocidal dictatorship to liberal democracy, A Demon-Haunted Land places in full view the toxic mistrust, profound bitterness, and spiritual malaise that unfolded alongside the economic miracle. Drawing on previously unpublished archival materials, acclaimed historian Monica Black argues that the surge of supernatural obsessions stemmed from the unspoken guilt and shame of a nation remarkably silent about what was euphemistically called “the most recent past.” This shadow history irrevocably changes our view of postwar Germany, revealing the country’s fraught emotional life, deep moral disquiet, and the cost of trying to bury a horrific legacy.
