“Probably the only thing that genuinely was cancelled in the last 20 years was … The Dixie Chicks,” the longtime progressive blogger Atrios tweeted on June 20. As his use of “genuinely” suggests, Atrios, like many left-wing commentators, is dismissive of the recent flare-up of complaints about “cancel culture,” and when,
At the close of the 20th century, Alexander Keyssar found himself writing what would become the preeminent book on the history of enfranchisement in America. This had not been his original plan. He had spent years, in fact, working on a very different plan—“a highly quantitative study of working-class
The ways in which disabled people have suffered from the stigma surrounding disability vary “from the freak shows of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the unwilling institutionalization and sterilizations of disabled people.” Disabled activists like Michael Winter recalls the discrimination he’s experienced like “being forced to
Over the last few weeks, issues ostensibly about freedom of speech once again made headlines. Unfortunately, these debates seem plagued by conceptual brittleness. Classically, “freedom of speech” refers to freedom from state-enforced censorship, and despite what the current state of the “free speech” debate might lead one to think, the
If we look for people who made no mistakes, who were always on the right side, who never apologized for tyrants or unjust wars, we shall have few heroes and heroines. “National pride is to countries what self-respect is to individuals: a necessary condition for self-improvement,” Richard Rorty wrote. “Too
The criticisms of Robin DiAngelo and her book White Fragility have been intense, even by culture war standards. There are lots of reasons DiAngelo’s controversial book is receiving so much blowback, and some of those concerns are legitimate. White fragility, when deployed in debates as a form of psychologizing
“This crisis has long been concealed by the survival of the outward forms and historical institutions created by freedom, veiling its internal decay beneath,” wrote Guido de Ruggiero ominously in his History of European Liberalism (HEL). In 1922, when de Ruggiero was an historian of philosophy, teaching at the University
Because liberalism is often seen, particularly on the left, as enjoying ideological hegemony in the modern United States, there is an assumption that the current police system is a natural outgrowth of liberal ideas. Writing in Jacobin, Alex S. Vitale argues that “Liberals’ reform agenda stems from a belief that
The continued protests against the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans are testing both the USA and the world. They highlight the structural racism in American society and the extent of the nation’s commitment to equality of rights and justice for all. Globally, the
Whenever I set aside time to write about anti-Semitism in contemporary politics, I block out some time to make substantive updates for the inevitable anti-Semitic scandal(s) that will happen in between my first draft and the potential publication. In the contemporary environment, the probability of a major political figure
In the wake of the tragedy in Minneapolis, even some conservatives have been forced to concur that there may be a need for criminal justice reform, and because of this, change seems to finally be on the horizon. However, it would be egregious not to include the prospect of prison
From our earliest days as a nation, the American story has been one of striving. Born in pursuit of a more perfect union, we have repeatedly sought to animate the ideals of liberty and justice in our laws and mores. Our history lays bare our successes and failures in this