. A nation doesn’t lose its freedoms in foreign lands. It loses them at home. Atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not diminish American democracy. Neither will drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. The GOP is doing that under our noses every day, right now, in cities and the states, in the congress of […]
Boycotting Rush, or Citizens United
. It isn’t that you boycott. It’s what you boycott. And why. As the ends don’t justify the means (most people would agree), ends don’t illegitimize the means either. Reasons matter. Aims matter. We can pursue good ends through bad means, and for bad reasons. We can likewise use a good – or at least […]
The Duty to Retreat from Standing Your Ground
. When awful incidents like that of the Trayvon Williams killing occur, good outcomes are the attention they draw to existent social conditions, such as the continuing role of race in our relations and the advent of “stand your ground” laws in so many states. A characteristic bad outcome is how the discussion of these […]
ALEC – Will the Real George Soros Please Stand Up?
It began with a March 15 blog post – University of Wisconsin Professor of History William Cronon’s fist blog post on his new blog, Scholar as Citizen – a blog post entitled “Who’s Really Behind Recent Republican Legislation in Wisconsin and Elsewhere? (Hint: It Didn’t Start Here) . It delivered on what the title offered. […]