Public Philosophy

The welfare state rests on the assumption that people have rights to food, shelter, health care, retirement income, and other goods provided by the government. David Kelley examines the historical origins of that assumption, and the rationale used to support it today.

We have entered what is called the "biological century" and a new biopolitics has emerged to address the implications for America's collective value system, our well-being, and ultimately, our future. The Body Politic is the first book to recognize and assess this new force in our political landscape - one that fuels today's culture wars and has motivated politicians of all stripes to reexamine their platforms.

What explains the growing class divide between the well-educated and everybody else? Noted author Brink Lindsey, a senior scholar at the Kauffman Foundation, argues that it's because economic expansion is creating an increasingly complex world in which only a minority with the right knowledge and skills - the right "human capital" - reap the majority of the economic rewards. The complexity of today's economy is not only making these lucky elites richer - it is also making them smarter.

When we start with the wrong question, no matter how good an answer we get, it won't give us the results we want. Rather than joining the throngs who are asking, When will this economic crisis be over? Jim Wallis says the right question to ask is "How will this crisis change us?" The worst thing we can do now, Wallis tells us, is to go back to normal. Normal is what got us into this situation.

With falling wages and rising inequality, persistent unemployment, failing schools, and broken cities, have America's best days come and gone? In America Needs Talent, Jamie Merisotis, a globally recognized leader in philanthropy, higher education, and public policy, explains why talent is needed to usher in a new era of innovation and success and why deliberate choices must be made by government, the private sector, education, and individuals to grow talent in America.

In a reporting tour de force, award-winning journalist Steven Brill takes an uncompromising look at the adults who are fighting over America’s failure to educate its children and points the way to reversing that failure. Brill not only takes us inside their roller-coaster battles, he also concludes with a surprising prescription for what it will take from both sides to put the American dream back in America’s schools.

America today confronts a host of urgent problems, many of them seemingly intractable but some we are entirely capable of solving. In Five Easy Theses, James M. Stone presents specific commonsense solutions to a handful of our most pressing challenges, showing how simple it would be to shore up Social Security, rein in an out-of-control financial sector, reduce inequality, and make health care and education better and more affordable.

Meet the essential Bernie Sanders, an authentic and uncompromising champion of the people. Independent United States Senator Bernie Sanders, who has a 35-year career in public service, first as Burlington, Vermont's mayor then as Vermont's sole representative to Congress, and currently as a United States senator, is now campaigning to become president of the United States.

When Mark Zuckerberg announced in front of a cheering Oprah audience his $100 million pledge to transform the Newark Schools - and to solve the education crisis in every city in America - it looked like a huge win for then-mayor Cory Booker and governor Chris Christie. But their plans soon ran into a constituency not so easily moved - Newark's key education players, fiercely protective of their billion-dollar-per-annum system.

What do people do when they count? What do numbers really mean? We all know that people can lie with statistics, but in this groundbreaking work, eminent political scientist Deborah Stone uncovers a much deeper problem. With help from Dr. Seuss and Cookie Monster, she explains why numbers can't be objective: in order to count, one must first decide what counts. Every number is the ending to a story built on cultural assumptions, social conventions, and personal judgments.

Over the past several years, Jonathan Kozol has visited nearly 60 public schools. Virtually everywhere, he finds that conditions have grown worse for inner-city children in the 15 years since federal courts began dismantling the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. First, a state of nearly absolute apartheid now prevails in thousands of our schools. The segregation of Black children has reverted to a level that the nation has not seen since 1968. Few of the students in these schools know White children any longer.

Solutions...not theories. Political progress...not political posturing. Instead of the constant jockeying for political advantage, in What Works, author and columnist Cal Thomas focuses on what promotes the general welfare, regardless of which party or ideology gets the credit. Thomas probes and provides answers to questions like: Why must we constantly fight the same battles over and over? Why don't we consult the past and use common sense in order to see that what others discovered long ago still works today?

In den Jahren 2020 und 2021, der Zeit der Covid-19-Pandemie, ereignete sich ein bemerkenswertes Schauspiel. Während der weitaus größte Teil der Menschen Empathie mit den Schwachen und besonders Gefährdeten zeigte, entpflichtete sich eine Minderheit davon und rebellierte gegen die staatlichen Maßnahmen zum Schutz der Gesundheit aller Bürger. Für Richard David Precht ein Anlass, darüber nachzudenken, was eigentlich die Pflicht des Fürsorge- und Vorsorgestaates gegenüber seinen Bürgern ist und was die Pflicht seiner Bürger.

Vinte anos após sua avó materna despedir-se precocemente desta Terra, vítima de um câncer, um de seus netos resolve abrir seu "álbum de memórias" e contar, em versos, um pouco da história de seu convívio com ela, dona Maria do Carmo. Uma perspectiva, também, sobre cultura, linguagem, costumes da época de Maria e seu lugar de origem, o Nordeste brasileiro.

Representing non-citizens caught up in what he calls the immigration and enforcement “meat grinder”, Bill Ong Hing witnessed their trauma, arriving at this conclusion: migrants should have the right to free movement across borders—and the right to live free of harassment over immigration status. He cites examples of racial injustices endemic in immigration law and enforcement, from historic courtroom cases to the recent treatment of Haitian migrants.

#1 best-selling author and popular radio and television host Glenn Beck considers the hot-button issue of education in the US, exposing the weaknesses of the Common Core school curriculum and examining why liberal solutions fail. As he did with the issue of gun control in his thoughtful and succinct #1 best seller Control, Glenn Beck uncovers the politically motivated truth behind the continual failures of the American educational system and offers real, tangible solutions for change.

Uma reflexão sobre o que nos amarra e motiva. Nada foi dito sobre qualquer criatura, não há respostas sobre a pane elétrica e de rádio, ninguém sabe nada sobre o comportamento das aves e muito menos o porquê um eclipse solar está durante tantas horas a trazer de volta a idade das trevas. E se na realidade não viram nada nas árvores? Se a histeria coletiva e pessoas de má fé aproveitaram-se do momento para aterrorizar a cidade? Talvez apenas o que faltava era uma oportunidade de as pessoas mostrarem quem realmente são.

This essay comes from the NPR series This I Believe, which features brief personal reflections from both famous and unknown Americans. The pieces that make up the series compel listeners to rethink not only what and how they have arrived at their beliefs, but also the extent to which they share them with others.

In 2002, New York City's newly elected mayor Michael Bloomberg made a historic announcement: His administration had won control of the city's school system in a first step toward reversing its precipitous decline. In a controversial move, he appointed Joel Klein, an accomplished lawyer from outside the education establishment, to lead this ambitious campaign. Lessons of Hope is Klein's inside account of his eight-year mission of improvement.

The timeline of the book is a four-city lecture tour the author organized for Hawking in the early 1990s (Portland, Eugene, Seattle, and Vancouver, BC). Hawking's powerful meetings with students with disabilities, officially collateral events, were remarkable. However, the greater significance of these stories of the road is better appreciated in the context of the central narrative question of the book: the nature of the universe and our place/role in it.