Tag: liberal democracy
How Humanism Can Save the World
One evening not long ago, I was doomscrolling on social media, wading through the detritus of our present moment: Videos of terrorists in Israel decapitating a man with a garden hoe. A clip of Donald Trump being cruel and narcissistic. Footage of mobs physically assaulting some lone stranger they disagree with, pummeling him as he lies prone on the ground.
These are all products of the rising tide of dehumanization that has swept across the world. The famous dates
Reader Views on the Role of Taboos
Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Last week I asked readers, “How should liberal democracies utilize or eschew taboos?”
Replies have been edited for length and clarity.
We in liberal democracies have a fondness for countercultural expression and norm challenging that can seem paradoxical—if so many of us come to love a rebel,
The Role of Taboos in a Liberal Democracy
Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
How should liberal democracies utilize or eschew taboos? (See any and all items below for context, and feel free to construe the question broadly or to focus on anything related to it.)
Send your responses to [email protected] or simply reply to this email.
The Myth of the Effective Dictator
Last week, at a Fox News town hall (where else?), former President Donald Trump called China’s despot, Xi Jinping, a “brilliant” guy who “runs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.” Lest anyone doubt his admiration, Trump added that Xi is “smart, brilliant, everything perfect. There’s nobody in Hollywood like this guy.”
Trump is not alone. Many in the United States and around the globe see the allure of a dictator who gets things done and makes the trains run
Israel’s Tattered Social Contract – The Atlantic
Eran Schwartz looks like a fighter pilot. The 40-something appeared last week on the Israeli television show Ofira and Berkowitz—a black V-neck T-shirt over his trim, athletic chest; his black hair cut short—to defend his decision to end his service in the air-force reserves. “We’re not the ones who tore up the social contract,” he said. “We swore to serve a state that is Jewish and democratic. And if Netanyahu is going to end Israel’s being a liberal
Behind the U.S. Right’s Fascination With Viktor Orbán
H
ungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has become a hero for the American right. This past January, Tucker Carlson relocated his Fox News show for the second time to Budapest. In May, Orbán himself opened a special event in Budapest organized by the U.S. Conservative Political Action Conference; the Hungarian leader was a guest again at the group’s annual meeting this month in Texas, where his declaration that “the globalists can all go to hell” was greeted with hosannas.
In
French Secularism Leaves Little Room for Religion
What forces hold a liberal democracy together? What forces can tear a liberal democracy apart? These were some of the questions on my mind as I listened earlier this year to the French education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, defend a proposal that had been placed before the nation.
The setting was grand: the French Senate, a chamber as elegant
Mob Justice Is Trampling Democratic Discourse
“It was no great distance, in those days, from the prison-door to the market-place. Measured by the prisoner’s experience, however, it might be reckoned a journey of some length.”
So begins the tale of Hester Prynne, as recounted in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s most famous novel, The Scarlet Letter. As readers of this classic American text know, the story begins after Hester gives birth to a child out of wedlock and refuses to name the father. As a result, she is
The Myth of the Golden Years
“You’ll want to read this,” my wife said, handing me the Sunday Boston Globe. The cover story that week in late September 2020 was about a 62-year-old woman who had colon cancer that had metastasized. She died in a local hospital; her husband was also in poor health and could not take care of her at home. After she died, he moved into an area facility. Reading of someone so close to my own age succumbing to a highly