Government Philosophy

Si l'on veut réellement rassembler la grande majorité des classes populaires autour d'un programme de déconstruction graduelle du système capitaliste (et non pas simplement accroître ses privilèges électoraux), il faut impérativement commencer par remettre en question ce vieux système de clivages fondé sur la "confiance aveugle dans l'idée de progrès".

Power and Persuasion stands apart for its critical evaluation of the concepts, doctrines, and activities that the US Department of Defense and Department of State employ for the art of strategic communication including psychological operations, military information support operations, propaganda, and public diplomacy.

Award-winning journalist Mike Hixenbaugh delivers the immersive and eye-opening story of Southlake, Texas, a district that seemed to offer everything parents would want for their children—small classes, dedicated teachers, financial resources, a track record of academic success, and school spirit in abundance.

Moderate Conservatism: Reclaiming the Center by John Kekes is a response to attacks on the United States' 300-year-old constitutional democracy by extremists on the left and the right. It makes a reasoned case for moderation and the defense of a political system that has endured because it has balanced the often-conflicting claims of justice, liberty, equality, prosperity, and security. That balance is now threatened by extremists who ignore all else but their grievances.

How a band of antislavery leaders recovered the radical philosophical inspirations of the first American Revolution to defeat the slaveholders' oligarchy in the Civil War.

In the first half of the twentieth century the Keynesian brand of economics, which saw government spending as a necessary spur to economic growth, prevailed. Then in the 1970s, conservatives fought back. Once they got people to believe a few simple ideas instead—that only the free market could produce growth, that taxes and regulation stifle growth—the battle was won.

In The Republic, Plato tackles the big issues of the state and the individual: how the state should be ruled, and by whom; and the way the individual should lead his life - and why. The lively quality of the dialogue can be clearly appreciated in this new translation by Tom Griffith.

When Lorenzo de' Medici seized control of the Florentine Republic in 1512, he summarily fired the Secretary to the Second Chancery of the Signoria and set in motion a fundamental change in the way we think about politics. The man who held the aforementioned office was none other than Niccolo Machiavelli, who, suddenly finding himself out of a job after 14 years of patriotic service, set a precedent for many a politician to come: He became a commentator and pundit.

Militarized police officers with tanks and drones. Pervasive government surveillance and profiling. Social media that distract and track us. All of these, contends Bernard E. Harcourt, are facets of a new and radical governing paradigm in the United States - one rooted in the modes of warfare originally developed to suppress anticolonial revolutions and, more recently, to prosecute the war on terror. The Counterrevolution is a penetrating and disturbing account of the rise of counterinsurgency, first as a military strategy but increasingly as a way of ruling ordinary Americans.

On the face of it, Avatar: The Last Airbender is a story about a lone superhero. However, saving the world is a team effort, embodied in Team Avatar, aka the Gaang. Aang needs help from his friends and tutors, even from non-human animals. Avatar: The Last Airbender and Philosophy brings to the fore the Eastern, Western, and Indigenous philosophies that are implicit in the show. This volume features contributions by experts on Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian, and Indigenous schools of thought, next to focusing on Western classical authors.

In Dangerous Minds, Ronald Beiner traces the deepest philosophical roots of such right-wing ideologues as Richard Spencer, Aleksandr Dugin, and Steve Bannon to the writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger - and specifically to the aspects of their thought that express revulsion for the liberal-democratic view of life. Beiner contends that Nietzsche's hatred and critique of bourgeois, egalitarian societies has engendered new disciples on the populist right who threaten to overturn the modern liberal consensus.

This Very Short Introduction explores the philosophical ideas and political theories belonging to one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. As a survivor of the Holocaust, Arendt's life informed her work exploring the meaning and construction of power, evil, totalitarianism, and direct democracy. Dana Villa explains how Arendt gained world-wide fame with the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism, and went on to have a distinguished career as a political theorist and public intellectual.

Whether or not you have children, you know that education is vital to the prosperity and future of our society. Yet our current system simply doesn't work. Parents feel increasingly powerless, and nearly half of Americans give our schools a grade of "C". Now, in his new book, Ron Paul attacks the problem head-on and provides a focused solution that centers on strong support for home schooling and the application of free market principles to the American education system.

Post-modernity is the creative destruction that has shattered our present times into fragments. Post-modernism stood for everything modernism rejected: fun, exuberance, irresponsibility. But beneath its glitzy surface, post-modernism had a dirty secret: It was the fig leaf for a rapacious new kind of capitalism. It was also the forcing ground of the "post-truth", by means of which Western values got turned upside down. In his brilliant history of a dangerous idea, Stuart Jeffries tells a narrative that starts in the early 1970s and continues to today.

An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham, although his conception of it was very different from Bentham's. Hoping to remedy the problems found in an inductive approach to science, such as confirmation bias, he clearly set forth the premises of falsification as the key component in the scientific method.

In Aristotle and an Aardvark Go to Washington, our two favorite philosopher-comedians return just in time to save us from the doublespeak and flim-flam of politics in America.

Deploying jokes as well as the occasional insight from Aristotle and his peers, Cathcart and Klein explain what politicos are up to when they state: "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence"; "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is"; or even, "We hold these truths to be self-evident...."

Taming the Rascal Multitude is a judicious selection of essays and interviews from Z Magazine from 1997 to 2014. In each, Chomsky takes up some question of the moment. As such, in sum, the essays provide a historical overview of the history that preceded Trump and the reaction to Trump. The essays situate what followed even without having known what would follow. They explicate what preceded the current era and provide a step-by-step revelation, or how-to, for successfully comprehending social events and relations.

The biggest “tragedy of the commons” is the misconception that commons are failures - relics from another era rendered unnecessary by the market and state. Think Like a Commoner dispels such prejudices by explaining the rich history and promising future of the commons - an ageless paradigm of cooperation and fairness that is re-making our world.

The dystopian future we've been warned of is here. Dave Rubin has been on the front lines of the culture wars for years. Now, he offers tactics you can use to protect yourself from today’s authoritarian rule—from resisting the grip of Big Tech to staying sane in a post-truth world. What’s more, he offers a vision for the next generation of patriots who will need to face the future head-on, holding fast to their values and creating a meaningful life no matter how frenzied and fabricated the news of the day is.

Reform or Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg is a seminal work in political theory that explores the fundamental question of whether social change is best achieved through gradual reforms or revolutionary upheavals. Luxemburg critically examines the limitations of reformist approaches within the capitalist system, arguing that true liberation requires a radical transformation of the existing socio-economic order. Through a nuanced analysis of class struggle, imperialism, and the dynamics of capitalism, Luxemburg presents a compelling argument that challenges prevailing notions of incremental change.