Roundup Top Ten for August 28, 2020
The Guardians: Does "The Resistance" Actually Want More Democracy, or Less?by Samuel MoynSamuel Moyn warns that a leading Never Trump legal scholar is less concerned with how Trump might harm minorities than with how Trump might harm the image of rule by elites. |
Nepotism Is Bad For Government. Trump’s Convention Reminds Us Whyby Christine AdamsThe pervasive influence of Trump's family members on government compares to the courts of the Bourbon kings of France. Republicans might consider how that worked out. |
For Black Women, The 19th Amendment Marked Not The End, But The Beginning Of The Movement For Voting Rightsby Martha S. JonesBlack women sought ways to exercise political power without the vote at the same time as they labored in a long campaign to win access the ballot. |
Trump’s Convention May Be The Culmination Of Decades Of Republicans’ Dirty Politicsby Julian ZelizerThe low-road tactics have proved to be effective. They play to the worst fears of voters, and they have succeeded in negatively shaping how parts of the electorate view Democratic candidates. |
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Right to Warn of “Fascism in the United States”by Federico Finchelstein, Pablo Piccato and Jason StanleyAmerican exceptionalism establishes as dogma that Americans are either too good or too dumb to embrace ethnonationalist authoritarianism and overthrow democratic institutions. The authors are not confident this is true. |
The Evangelical Left once Had a Home in the GOP. What Happened?by John W. ComptonEvangelical Christians in the political arena today support conservative Republicans. It's not just because the Democratic party moved too far left; the leaders of the New Right purged moderate Evangelicals from the ranks in the 1970s and left the religious left without a clear partisan home. |
The Banality of Evocation: How to Remember a Feminist Movement That Hasn’t Endedby Erin L. ThompsonThe success of the organization Monumental Women in placing statues of Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Central Park in fact illustrates that the struggle for women's power is very much ongoing. |
No, There Isn’t A Constitutional Right To Not Wear Masksby Helena RosenblattLibertarian arguments against compulsory mask-wearing to fight COVID-19 claim the mantle of individual liberty but ignore the way that liberal theory has focused on both rights and duties as the core of the social contract. |
Jimmy Carter Tried to Make it Easier to Vote in 1977. The Right Stopped Him with the Same Arguments it’s Using Todayby Rick PerlsteinThe ascendant New Right in the Republican Party thwarted efforts to make voting easier in the 1970s. Making voting difficult remains a central strategy for the party today. |
Stars and Stripes and Blasphemyby L.D. BurnettWhat we heard from Mike Pence was a white evangelical Christian swapping out the Savior for the United States flag. |