One of the biggest, long-lasting delusions of progressives is that people are moved mainly by rational arguments. Nothing could be further from the truth.
2011
A Progressive Strategy for 2011-2012
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Primaries are one way we the people can still bring our concerns into national politics.
2011
The Real Education Reformers: Why Chicago Mothers and Teachers Are Doing More than “Waiting for Superman”
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Don’t race to the top, look to the grassroots for the future health of our schools.
2011
Nourishing Hope — in Uganda and in the United States
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How come Ugandan activists are upbeat while so many U.S. activists are glum?
2011
Prospects for the U.S. Left: Not Bad At All
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The growing public anger at capitalism is palpable. When conservative radio hosts play up Marxist websites, things are looking up.
2011
Overcoming Despair as the Republicans Take Over: A Conversation with Noam Chomsky
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How are national initiatives built locally? Can we push Obama leftward in 2012? Chomsky calls for small steps toward confronting global capital.
Editorials & Actions
Another Betrayal: Obama Begs U.S. Corporations to “Invest In America”
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Instead of embracing a new New Deal, Obama is begging America’s corporate elite to alleviate the suffering of those most wounded by the “free marketplace.”
Editorials & Actions
How Obama’s State of the Union Could Have Reflected the State of the Spirit Today
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Ideas like “caring for each other” or “caring for the planet” and words like love, generosity, compassion, solidarity, and environmental sanity were painfully absent from this year’s State of the Union address.
Editorials & Actions
When Generosity, Love, and Kindness are Public Policy, the Violence We Saw in Arizona will Dramatically Diminish
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The attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of so many others in Arizona has elicited a number of policy suggestions, from gun control to private protection for elected officials, to banning incitement to violence
Editorials & Actions
Shooting of Congresswoman Giffords Is More than a Tragedy
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The shooting of Jewish Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is not just a tragedy — it’s part of a right-wing assault on government and the liberals and progressives who support it.
2011
Formative Culture in the Age of Imposed Forgetting
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The cultural politics of casino capitalism has numbed our sense of social and moral responsibility. Against this moral coma, with its theater of cruelty and legalized irresponsibility, we need to recast the language of politics.
2011
Internal and External Challenges for Muslims
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While barriers to understanding and implementing human rights are the biggest challenge facing the community from within, particularly in the international context, from without, Islamophobia is a huge problem. The Danish cartoon controversy is a prominent case in which there was a marked failure of communication.
2011
What is a Superpower?
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What are some of the other attributes of a superpower? Once again, they might very well mirror those of a person. These would include a demonstrable commitment to truth, justice, peace, freedom, humility, human rights, generosity, and the upholding of other moral values.
2011
Reconciling Outer and Inner Enlightenment
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Utopian as it may sound, I believe that the hope for significant reform in the United States as a whole must also create a strong civil society in which the competing demands of faith and reason have somehow been reconciled.
2011
Cultivating a Public Emotional Intelligence
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Unfortunately, the response of the progressive community to Obama’s politics is equally troubling. While appearing more willing to take on the Right, many progressive commentators come off as presumptuous. It’s too easy to tell someone else how to use their power rather than work to develop our own, which I suspect reflects mismanaged emotions.