Romania’s education law hits a new low (I would like to thank Jeff Isaac and Roxana Marinescu for their suggestions. All perspectives are mine.) Yesterday the Supreme Court of the United States stated through a 6-3 majority decision that gender and sex are not the same thing. To discriminate against sex as the body parts one has is not the same as discriminating against a person’s gender identity …
A Critical Response to Osita Nwanevu’s “Bipartisanship Won’t Save Us” The New Republic’s Osita Nwanevu is a consistently sharp and often provocative commentator on public affairs. He just published a strong piece entitled “Bipartisanship Won’t Save Us.” I agree with him. Bipartisanship won’t save us and the reason is simple: The Republican party is a huge part of what plagues us, and our liberation from its grip is …
I wake up in the morning determined to examine one of Donald Trump’s press briefings, seeking to analyze the specific ideological and expressive dimensions of his presentation of self in my daily life. But I have to admit, I have failed. I have found it too difficult to watch an entire briefing from beginning to end. Paying close sustained attention to his live performances is just too painful. …
It’s classic neoliberalism — with a Schmittian face An earlier version of this post was published in the Verfassungsblog On Matters Constitutional. “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s gotta be. It’s total.” President Donald Trump, April 13, 2020 Carl Schmitt, Germany’s most influential authoritarian jurist, has long played a major role in political and legal debates …
Why the Democratic Party Must Support Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez It has long been understood by most political commentators that the fate of democracy in the U.S. hinges on the defeat of Donald Trump in November, along with as many of his Republican enablers as possible. Since Super Tuesday, it has been clear that the Democratic nominee will be Joe Biden. And in the past week, there has been an …
Viktor Orbán’s coronavirus power grab Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán never lets a crisis go to waste. On 20 March, late on a Friday afternoon, he put before the Hungarian Parliament a law that would give him dictatorial powers under cover of declaring a state of emergency to fight the coronavirus. The law has been ably translated into English here. Orbán sought an expedited procedure to ram through this …
How Erving Goffman helps us understand the hidden power of Biden, Sanders, and the Democratic governors In order to defend and extend democracy in America in the time of the pandemic, the Democrats must develop a way to harness their considerable expressive powers. They must creatively present themselves and their policies in opposition to Donald J. Trump and Trumpism, including his excruciating slow and chaotic response to the …
Democracy in lockdown On 23 March 1933, the German President, Paul von Hindenburg, acting in accord with Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, and on the pretext the nation was facing a crisis after an arsonist had set a fire that had badly damaged the Reichstag, the home of the German Parliament, signed a “Presidential Decree for the Protection of People and State.” A month later, a subsequent …
Populist rulers are exploiting this crisis to the fullest One byproduct of the COVID-19 crisis is that opposition parties are finding it increasingly difficult to hold governments accountable. In Poland, Hungary, and other countries under populist rule, the authorities are exploiting this to the fullest. WARSAW – Threats to national security invariably limit domestic political disputes. Now that governments have assumed a leading role in fighting the COVID-19 …
How our patrimonial presidency endangers us all In recent years, many political scientists have sounded the alarm about the dangers posed to democracy by Donald Trump’s presidency. Trump’s disregard for the rule of law, his coddling of bigots, and his utter lack of basic decency – all these things raise red flags. But we’ve mostly disregarded one danger and it’s the one I believe is the most significant: Trump’s attack …
