An important demonstration that to thrive—indeed, to survive—our fissured democracy must be far more democratic.
A sharp portrait of our deeply fractured political system.
Our current political polarization is neither unique nor intractable, notes social sciences professor Dotson, who details measures that can engender a genuinely democratic ethos. It is not too much democracy (or politics) that thwarts us but too little, writes the author—and not nearly enough plurality in our dialogues or the processes of designing and enacting policy. Critiquing the notions of objective fact or incontrovertible truth and upending much contemporary thinking on the choice between the expertise of elites and populist-driven concepts of governance, Dotson locates the impediments we face in our reliance on calcified beliefs, outmoded constructs, and the demonstrably faulty procedures we cling to. No segment of American society escapes his scrutiny: liberals, conservatives, moderates, fundamentalists, libertarians, defenders of the free market, and advocates of science above all. Each makes fundamental errors in assaying the problems we confront and the path forward, leaving us confused, frustrated, and fatalistic. We suffer due to our fear of conflict and simplistic calls for “civility,” longing for an age of certitude (that never was), and insistence on thinking our opponents are either corrupt, ignorant, or brainwashed. The much-derided “soft” sciences offer some keys to achieving balance, as does heightened participation in democratic processes by every portion of society. Dotson advocates for a less authoritarian approach to politics that embraces the life experiences and skills of everyone, regardless of political conviction, and that blends these perspectives with those of acknowledged experts and involves the widest spectrum of citizens in every facet of developing policy. He knows his prescriptions for change, however logical, will be challenging to implement. Perhaps some of them are unattainable, but his arguments are cogent, his optimism profound.
An important demonstration that to thrive—indeed, to survive—our fissured democracy must be far more democratic.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-262-54271-5
Page Count: 232
Publisher: MIT Press
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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