Social Democracy

American Democracy’s Last Stand: Propaganda, Cult Loyalty, and the Politics of Power is a comprehensive, deeply researched examination of the forces reshaping America’s political landscape in the wake of Donald Trump's second term. Through an exploration of historical precedents, psychological manipulations, and the alarming rise of authoritarian tactics, this book offers a critical analysis of how propaganda, cult-like loyalty, and the relentless pursuit of power have pushed the nation to a dangerous crossroads.

Was unsere Demokratie bedroht: Joachim Gauck über die Gefahren von außen und innen – der Bestseller in aktualisierter Fassung Der russische Überfall auf die Ukraine bedroht unsere liberale Demokratie in einem Moment, in dem sie zugleich auch von innen unter Druck steht. Wie ist es dazu gekommen? Der ehemalige Bundespräsident Joachim Gauck geht gemeinsam mit seiner Co-Autorin Helga Hirsch der Frage nach, weshalb das Vertrauen vieler Bürger in unsere liberale Demokratie erschüttert ist.

Die offenen Gesellschaften des Westens sind bedroht, durch autoritäre, äußere Gegner, aber auch durch rechte, linke und religiöse Fundamentalisten im Inneren. Jahrzehntelang hat man radikale Minderheiten unterschätzt, durch Migration ins Land gelassen, teilweise mit einem Mulikulti-Mäntelchen kaschiert. Aber sie tolerieren nicht, wodurch sie groß geworden sind: Meinungsfreiheit und Gleichheit Aller. Identitäre von rechts und von links vergiften das öffentliche Klima, Antisemiten und Staatsfeinde haben die Masken abgeworfen.

The myths about Franklin Delano Roosevelt live on. For the left, FDR was a champion of the working class and the oppressed, suffering abuse as a “traitor to his class.” He gave up the lifestyle of the Hudson River gentry to lead his country out of the Depression and to victory against fascism. For many on the right, FDR was out of his depth on economics but provided Americans with the optimism and confidence necessary to prevail during the Depression and gain victory in World War II.

Americans today have “freedom” to be fleeced, groped, injected, harassed, surveilled, vilified, disarmed, beaten, detained, and maybe shot by federal agents. From hapless homeowners hit by SWAT raids to pandemic lockdowns pointlessly paralyzing lives, government agencies have become far more intrusive and abusive. There is no escape from tinhorn dictators seizing guns, sabotaging schooling, or wrecking housing markets.

In democracies, citizens must accept loss; we can’t always be on the winning side. But in the United States, the fundamental civic capacity of being able to lose is not distributed equally. Propped up by white supremacy, whites (as a group) are accustomed to winning. Black citizens, on the other hand, are expected to be political heroes whose civic suffering enables progress toward racial justice. In this book, Juliet Hooker, a leading thinker on democracy and race, argues that the two most important forces driving racial politics in the United States today are Black grief and white grievance.

Das Vertrauen der Europäer in die demokratische Politik ist zerrüttet. Institutionen, die im 20. Jahrhundert zu den wichtigsten Vertrauensträgern gehörten, werden von vielen infrage gestellt. Woran liegt das? Was bedeutet das für unsere Gesellschaft? Und wie können wir damit umgehen? In den vergangenen Jahren hat sich ein dramatischer gesellschaftlicher Wandel vollzogen. Viele Menschen stehen nicht nur der Politik, sondern auch großen Konzernen, Medien und sogar der Wissenschaft mit Skepsis gegenüber.

Tras escribir a las nuevas generaciones con su mensaje sobre la política y la importancia del compromiso en su libro A los que vienen, Manuela Carmena aboga ahora por dirigirse a cuantos se sienten cada vez más lejos de la política actual. En la era de la desafección, este libro es un elogio de la tolerancia como valor último de la democracia.

At the heart of power is a single family. They weren't elected but they live off the public purse. They aren't accountable to anyone, and yet between them they are privy to more government secrets than many cabinet ministers. Divinely appointed using a special hat, the head of the family is your superior, you his subject. Apparently he is guardian of our constitution - but we're also told he wouldn't dream of interfering in politics. If you accept the monarchy, you must accept the moral compromise that comes with it. But the good news is that we don't have to accept it.

I Dream with Open Eyes begins with an exploration of Prochnik's ancestral past: the pilgrimage of his mother's family, who were among the first English settlers in the New World. In the aftermath of the 2016 election, a parallel migration unfolds as Prochnik, along with his wife and their son, makes the decision to uproot their lives in New York to move to England.

America searched for an answer to "The Labor Question" during the Progressive Era in an effort to avoid the unrest and violence that flared so often in the late 19th and early 20th century.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia under Yeltsin and Putin implemented a political system of "imitation democracy," marked by "a huge disparity between formal constitutional principles and the reality of authoritarian rule." How did this system take shape, how else might it have developed, and what are the prospects for re-envisioning it more democratically in the future? These questions animate Dmitrii Furman's Imitation Democracy, a welcome antidote to books that blandly decry Putin as an omnipotent dictator without considering his platforms, constituencies, and sources of power.

America's political leaders have considered suffrage not a natural right but a privilege restricted by wealth, sex, race, residence, literacy, criminal conviction, and citizenship. Today, voter identification laws, political gerrymandering, registration requirements, felon disenfranchisement, and voter purges deny many millions of citizens the opportunity to express their views at the ballot box. We cannot blame the founders alone for America's embattled vote. Best-selling author Allan Lichtman notes that subsequent generations have failed to establish suffrage as a universal right.

Falsehoods have been at issue in every presidential impeachment proceeding from Nixon to Trump. But, until now, no one has analyzed why public lies might be impeachable offenses, and whether the First Amendment would provide a defense. Noting that speech by public employees does not receive the same First Amendment protection as the speech of ordinary citizens, legal scholar Catherine J. Ross proposes the constitutionally viable solution of treating presidents as public employees who work for the people.

This book details the destructive flawed foundations of Democracy, destroying the mythology behind the innovated political system which has become a valued religion to many voters and politicians. Diabolical Democracy Debunked also suggests a morally superior political system as an alternative to Democracy.

South African politics is riddled with delusions. Many common political arguments come pre-packaged in an old and dusty box - but the self-evident truths are not, in fact, so indisputable. Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh sets out to dismantle that box. He argues that free education is far from impossible, the ANC's liberation narrative is too idyllic to swallow, land reform is not the first step to chaos, and the media is not free....

Immer weniger Deutsche vertrauen noch den Institutionen dieses Landes - weder den Parteien noch den Medien, noch nicht einmal der Wissenschaft. Doch kann eine Demokratie so noch funktionieren? Anita Blasberg, preisgekrönte Journalistin, ergründet eine der dringlichsten Fragen unserer Zeit: den Vertrauensverlust in den eigenen Staat. Packend und schonungslos rekonstruiert sie die schrittweise Erosion des Vertrauens in den letzten dreißig Jahren - am Beispiel ihrer eigenen Mutter und entlang historischer Bruchstellen und Protagonisten.

Das Vermächtnis eines Jahrhundertpolitikers Henry Kissinger, Jahrhundertpolitiker und Friedensnobelpreisträger, Meister der Diplomatie und politischer Stratege, zeigt in diesem Alterswerk, was Staatskunst in Zeiten von Krise und Umbruch auszeichnet. Am Beispiel von sechs Staatenlenkern, denen er persönlich verbunden war - Konrad Adenauer und Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon und Anwar el-Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew und Margaret Thatcher -, führt er uns vor, wie aus dem Zusammenspiel von Strategie, Mut und Charakter politische Führung erwächst.

In Dissent, award-winning investigative journalist Jackie Calmes brings listeners closer to the truth of who Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is, where he came from, and how he and the Republican party at large managed to secure one of the highest seats of power in the land.

In this ground-breaking analysis, author James Kurth (a Harvard student of Samuel Huntington) explains that the roots of America's current foreign policy crisis lie in contradictions of an American empire which attempted to transform traditional American national interests promoted by Presidents like Teddy Roosevelt and FDR into a new American-led global order that has unsuccessfully attempted to promote supposedly universal, rather than uniquely American, ideals.