Democracy

My hope is that responsible citizens of your United States will respond to this dismal state of affairs not by abandoning the Republican Party or, more generally, abandoning participation in the democratic process, but instead by staying in or joining the Republican Party.

The latest World Happiness Report ranks all the world’s countries by happiness, based on polling of residents plus levels of GDP, life…

The rise of right-wing extremism is one of the indicators that despite many successes on their road to democracy, Slovakia may still be in the tunnel Havel referred to over 20 years ago.

Last fall, Norway’s TV2 released Occupied, a show about Russia occupying Norway that is now on Netflix with English subtitles. Providence readers would likely enjoy this window into a European perspective.

Can anyone imagine Truman or Eisenhower, Johnson or Reagan responding in a similar manner if Stalin, Khrushchev, or Brezhnev complimented them? Did they praise Moscow for blockading Berlin, for crushing Hungary, for snuffing out the Prague Spring, for smothering Poland, for being strong, for killing terrorists, for keeping restive peoples in line?

Sub-Saharan Africa in the 21st century faces one great opportunity and two great dangers. And American foreign policy will profoundly affect each.

Part IV: The Beautiful City

The cultivation of civic virtue in America depends on artists and entertainers who imaginatively portray the human condition, honestly question the American regime, and constructively represent embodied civic virtue—whether in World of Warcraft, The Wire, Scandal, or elsewhere.

Del Berg, age 100, died last week, reputedly the last of several thousand Americans who fought in the 1930s Spanish…