Disrespectful Democracy

Disrespectful Democracy PDF

Author: Emily Sydnor

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2019-10-08

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 0231548257

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The majority of Americans think that politics has an “incivility problem” and that this problem is only getting worse. Research demonstrates that negativity and rudeness in politics have been increasing for decades. But how does this tide of impolite-to-outrageous language affect our reactions to media coverage and our political behavior? Disrespectful Democracy offers a new account of the relationship between incivility and political behavior based on a key individual predisposition—conflict orientation. Individuals experience conflict in different ways; some enjoy arguments while others are uncomfortable and avoid confrontation. Drawing on a range of original surveys and experiments, Emily Sydnor contends that the rise of incivility in political media has transformed political involvement. Citizens now need to be able to tolerate or even welcome incivility in the public sphere in order to participate in the democratic process. Yet individuals who are turned off by incivility are not brought back in by civil presentation of issues. Sydnor considers the challenges in evaluating incivility’s normative benefits and harms to the political system: despite some detrimental aspects, certain levels of incivility in certain venues can promote political engagement, and confrontational behavior can be a vital tool in the citizen’s democratic arsenal. A rigorous and empirically informed analysis of political rhetoric and behavior, Disrespectful Democracy also proposes strategies to engage citizens across the range of conflict orientations.

Rude Democracy

Rude Democracy PDF

Author: Susan Herbst

Publisher: Temple University Press

Published: 2010-08-20

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1439903379

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How American politics can become more civil and amenable to public policy solutions, while still allowing for effective argument.

Rude Republic

Rude Republic PDF

Author: Glenn C. Altschuler

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2001-08-12

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 0691089868

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In this look at Americans and their politics, the authors argue for a more complex understanding of the space occupied by politics in 19th-century American society and culture.

Attention Deficit Democracy

Attention Deficit Democracy PDF

Author: James Bovard

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2015-03-24

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 1466892757

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"A lively attack on politicians, voters and government. Bovard's indictment of an ineffective but ever-expanding federal government would make any libertarian proud." --New York Post Does the people's need to believe in the president trump their duty to understand, to think critically, and demand truth? Have Americans been conditioned to ignore political frauds and believe the lies perpetuated by campaign ads? James Bovard diagnoses a national malady called "Attention Deficit Democracy," characterized by a citizenry that seems to be paying less attention to facts, and is less capable of judging when their rights and liberties are under attack. Bovard's careful research combined with his characteristically caustic style will give "ADD" a whole new meaning that pundits, politicians, and we the people will find hard to ignore.

Peace and Democratic Society

Peace and Democratic Society PDF

Author: Amartya Sen

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 1906924392

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Civil Paths to Peace contains the analyses and findings of the Commonwealth Commission on Respect and Understanding, established in response to the 2005 request of Commonwealth Head of Government for the Commonwealth Secretary-General to 'explore initiatives to promote mutual understanding and respect among all faiths and communities in the Commonwealth.' This report focuses particularly on the issues of terrorism, extremism, conflict and violence, which are much in ascendancy and afflict Commonwealth countries as well as the rest of the world. It argues that cultivating respect and understanding is both important in itself and consequential in reducing violence and terrorism. It further argues that cultivated violence is generated through fomenting disrespect and fostering confrontational misunderstandings. The report looks at the mechanisms through which violence is cultivated through advocacy and recruitment, and the pre-existing inequalities, deprivations and humiliations on which those advocacies draw. These diagnoses also clear the way for methods of countering disaffection and violence. In various chapters the different connections are explored and examined to yield general policy recommendations. Accepting diversity, respecting all human beings, and understanding the richness of perspectives that people have are of great relevance for all Commonwealth countries, and for its 1.8 billion people. They are also importance for the rest of the world. The civil paths to peace are presented here for use both inside the Commonwealth and beyond its boundaries. The Commonwealth has survived and flourished, despite the hostilities associated with past colonial history, through the use of a number of far-sighted guiding principles. The Commission argues that those principles have continuing relevance today for the future of the Commonwealth--and also for the world at large.

Spring Fever

Spring Fever PDF

Author: Andrew C McCarthy

Publisher: Encounter Books

Published: 2012-09-18

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1594036446

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The first fundamental truth about the "Arab Spring" is that there never was one. The salient fact of the Middle East, the only one, is Islam. The Islam that shapes the Middle East inculcates in Muslims the self-perception that they are members of a civilization implacably hostile to the West. The United States is a competitor to be overcome, not the herald of a culture to be embraced. Is this self-perception based on objective truth? Does it reflect an accurate construction of Islam? It is over these questions that American officials and Western intellectuals obsess. Yet the questions are irrelevant. This is not a matter of right or wrong, of some posture or policy whose subtle tweaking or outright reversal would change the facts on the ground. This is simply, starkly, the way it is. Every human heart does not yearn for freedom. In the Islam of the Middle East, "freedom" means something very nearly the opposite of what the concept connotes to Westerners – it is the freedom that lies in total submission to Allah and His law. That law, sharia, is diametrically opposed to core components of freedom as understood in the West – beginning with the very idea that man is free to make law for himself, irrespective of what Allah has ordained. It is thus delusional to believe, as the West's Arab Spring fable insists, that the region teems with Jamal al-Madisons holding aloft the lamp of liberty. Do such revolutionary reformers exist? Of course they do . . . but in numbers barely enough to weave a fictional cover story. When push came to shove – and worse – the reformers were overwhelmed, swept away by a tide of Islamic supremacism, the dynamic, consequential mass movement that beckons endless winter. That is the real story of the Arab Spring – that, and the Pandora's Box that opens when an American administration aligns with that movement, whose stated goal is to destroy America.

Democracy's Dangers & Discontents

Democracy's Dangers & Discontents PDF

Author: Bruce S. Thornton

Publisher: Hoover Press

Published: 2014-07-01

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 0817917969

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By democracy we usually mean a government comprising popular rule, individual human rights and freedom, and a free-market economy. Yet the flaws in traditional Athenian democracy can instruct us on the weaknesses of that first element of modern democracies shared with Athens: rule by all citizens equally. In Democracy's Dangers & Discontents, Bruce Thornton discusses those criticisms first aired by ancient critics of Athenian democracy, then traces the historical process by which the Republic of the founders has evolved into something similar to ancient democracy, and finally argues for the relevance of those critiques to contemporary U.S. policy. He asserts that many of the problems we face today are the consequences of the increasing democratization of our government and that the flaws of democracy are unlikely to be corrected. He argues that these dangers and discontents do not have to end in soft despotism—that American democracy's aptitude and strength can be recovered by restoring the limited government of the founders.

Ill Winds

Ill Winds PDF

Author: Larry Diamond

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2020-04-14

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 0525560645

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*Shortlisted for the 2020 Arthur Ross Book Award* From America’s leading scholar of democracy, a personal, passionate call to action against the rising authoritarianism that challenges our world order—and the very value of liberty Larry Diamond has made it his life's work to secure democracy's future by understanding its past and by advising dissidents fighting autocracy around the world. Deeply attuned to the cycles of democratic expansion and decay that determine the fates of nations, he watched with mounting unease as illiberal rulers rose in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, the Philippines, and beyond, while China and Russia grew increasingly bold and bullying. Then, with Trump's election at home, the global retreat from freedom spread from democracy's margins to its heart. Ill Winds' core argument is stark: the defense and advancement of democratic ideals relies on U.S. global leadership. If we do not reclaim our traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's authoritarian swell could become a tsunami, providing an opening for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and their admirers to turn the twenty-first century into a dark time of despotism. We are at a hinge in history, between a new era of tyranny and an age of democratic renewal. Free governments can defend their values; free citizens can exercise their rights. We can make the internet safe for liberal democracy, exploit the soft, kleptocratic underbelly of dictatorships, and revive America's degraded democracy. Ill Winds offers concrete, deeply informed suggestions to fight polarization, reduce the influence of money in politics, and make every vote count. In 2020, freedom's last line of defense still remains "We the people."

(Un)civil Democracy

(Un)civil Democracy PDF

Author: Sara Bentivegna

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2024

Total Pages: 115

ISBN-13: 3031544056

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This book offers a systematization of the recourse to political incivility by different subjects and in different contexts. The authors argue that incivility has now become a strategic resource that can be used by various actors in the public arena to achieve specific goals. We are referring not only to traditional political subjects, but also to journalists, citizens, movements and protest groups, that is to a plurality of actors who, from different angles, contribute to the construction of the "political spectacle". This resource can be activated according to circumstances and conveniences, whether their nature be political (to place an issue at the center of public debate or a new actor in the offer range), mediatic (to achieve an increase in visibility or viewership) or relational (to expand one's visibility and centrality in social media). The book identifies common elements linking the different levels of use of incivility, which can be traced in uncivil forms of communication. These are their expressive power (memorable gestures and unequivocal messages, which are immediately recognizable and visible), their aggregation power (they build group identities, and consolidate allegiances and bonds) and their mobilization power (they galvanize people, and inspire them to participate and take action). Sara Bentivegna is Full Professor at the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Rossella Rega is Associate Professor at the University of Siena, Italy.

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