Janek Wasserman— Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom is inarguably the most famous book associated with the Austrian School of Economics. The basic premises of Hayek’s argument are well known: “socialist” trends in German thought now threatened Western democracies; fascism and Nazism were the necessary outcome of those trends; government planning undermined
Gary Dorrien— Democratic socialism, an idea with a rich history in European politics and a slight history in U.S. American politics, is surging today in the U.S. partly because America has so little of it. European Social Democracy has helped to build the world’s most humane societies by universalizing the
Pascal Boyer— It is in the nature of human beings that they create societies. Philosophers have known and said that much for millennia. These days, scientists can paint a detailed picture of how evolution by natural selection made us social animals, providing us with those capacities and preferences that makes
Loka Ashwood— Rural Americans do, indeed, have more guns than their urban counterparts. According to the General Social Survey, the highest rates of gun ownership can be found in the most rural areas of the southeast United States. In those wide-open fields and forests, rural residents—black and white—are more likely to
Philip N. Howard— Since the great tragedy of Charlie Hebdo, politicians and pundits around the world have succumbed to the notion that social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, are to blame for violent online extremism. They argue that social media is not only a conduit for terrorists it is
Robert A. Dahl (1915 – 2014), eminent political scientist and champion of democracy, passed away on February 5, 2014 in Hamden, Connecticut, at age 98. Named by Foreign Affairs magazine the “dean of American political scientists,” Dahl was instrumental in building one of the first modern political science departments. Dahl authored hundreds of articles and dozens
Stein Ringen, author of the recently published Nation of Devils: Democratic Leadership and the Problem of Obedience, writes here on the current state of American democracy in light of the recent shutdown, financial concerns driving policy, and the possible erosion of the government into “soft despotism.” His book addresses one of the primary
Democracy has long been upheld as the ideal way to run a country. America, “land of the free” is revered for its representative government elected by the people for the people, and the US has committed to a mission of spreading and supporting democracy worldwide. In Joshua Kurlantzick’s newest book
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Mark Miller writes, “There are points of similarity between the political culture of late republican Rome and our own, but the differences reveal how far we have to go before we hit bottom — contrary to the dire warnings emanating from certain political quarters today.”
London Olympics 2012: Whose Games Are They Anyway?
Neil Faulkner is the author of A Visitor’s Guide to the Ancient Olympics, now available from Yale University Press. With only 30 days left before the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games, we thought to share some insight into the side of the Games you won’t see, even those as
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