#democracy

#democracy

"We are building the movement. We are pulling more people in, and we're keeping them engaged and activated."

The right to vote is often described as the cornerstone of American democracy. Yet the ability to exercise that right depends on something more basic: whether citizens possess the practical means to participate in the systems that govern their lives.

The Walrus Debate asks a timely question: Can Politics Be Civil Again? It brings together former political leaders to model respectful disagreement and explore dialogue's role in rebuilding public trust.

Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit's central message cut through the noise of electoral politics: secure a brighter future by correcting the wrongs of the past. His party specifically reached out to those whose concerns often go unheard: students, working-class and rural voters.

The EU resolution stated that it 'strongly condemns the continued arbitrary detention of democratically elected President Bazoum and his wife.' The EU further demanded their 'immediate and unconditional release.'

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Bret Stephens , a Zubrow Distinguished Visiting Journalist, and Seth Klarman '79, CEO and portfolio manager of The Baupost Group and 2026 Hatfield Fellow, will offer "On Democracy, Conservatism and Journalism: A Conversation with Bret Stephens" March 6 at 4:30 p.m. in the Rhodes-Rawling Auditorium in Klarman Hall.

Worldwide, autocracies are on the rise, populists are gaining momentum, democratic societies are under pressure. Wars, inflation, fear of economic decline are causing great uncertainty. The "Germany-Monitor 2025" shows that the vast majority of Germans believe in democracy, and that support for democracy as a form of government is increasing, especially in the east of the country. This was announced by the Federal Government Commissioner for Eastern Germany, Elisabeth Kaiser, in Berlin on Thursday this week:

We're not going to keep going to work and boosting the world's greatest economy in exchange for us to give up on democracy. If we have to destroy the stock market to save democracy, we need to accept that and, more importantly, the richest and the most powerful people in the world and in this country need to understand that that is a real possibility. There is no economic stability without democratic stability. If you take away our democratic stability, we will take away

According to Oxfam International's "Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power" report this week, a billionaire boom has coincided with the rise of the richest exerting political influence, with billionaires 4,000 times more likely to hold office than less wealthy people globally. And if those billionaires aren't running for office, they're pouring money into campaigns. Per Oxfam, one in six dollars spent by all U.S. candidates, parties, and committees in the 2024 elections came from 100 billionaire families.

"Protecting the climate and protecting our democracy are inextricably linked," veteran climate reporter and activist Bill McKibben said last week at a Covering Climate Now press briefing on covering the climate story in 2026. President Donald Trump "is in many ways operating as a political arm of the oil industry," McKibben added, "and coming to grips with his authoritarian impulse is going to be crucial to ever getting any climate action."

As wealth inequality widens and billionaires become increasingly enmeshed with politics, the public is growing more and more disillusioned with the ultra-wealthy, and the role they play in society. It's not just those with low or median incomes who feel that way. A majority of millionaires now say that extreme wealth is a threat to democracy; that the ultra-rich buy political influence; and that political leaders should do more to tackle extreme wealth, like increasing taxes.

For two artists from NYC, the occasion means it is time to, once again, whip out their paintbrushes. Lesley Friedman Rosenthal and Brigitte Bentele of the Upper West Side in Manhattan mark the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in Washington, DC, with powerful and somewhat unsettling works of art. Their hope is to document a pivotal moment in American history and spark necessary conversations around politics and democracy.

The internet has turned fringe belief into mainstream politics and policy from authoritarianism to vaccines. With democracy itself threatened, is it time to go back to a previous world of landlines, letters and face-to-face-contact, audiotapes and Ansaphones? What would we miss about the online world that is worth the risk to liberal culture and basic freedoms? Should we turn the internet off?

At the BKA conference, she was discussing democracy in Germany. "At dinners with perfectly ordinary colleagues and friends who love their country, I often hear them say after the second glass of wine, that they're considering whether they should leave the country," Buyx said. "Should leave," meaning they don't want to. Buyx didn't name the particular threat. But every police officer in the room knows who she's talking about: the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

The nervousness of democrats before this epistemic crisis is partly based on a widespread assumption that the idea of democracy depends on the value of truth. But even this assumption has a cost. Sadly, the democratic tendency to overemphasise the value of truth enters into conflict with other democratic demands. This leads us into contradictions that become fodder for the enemies of open societies.

"What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience," wrote Hannah Arendt in her 1951 book, The Origins of Totalitarianism. I was born and raised in Chicagoland. Even during stints of travel and education, I have always considered myself a Chicagoan.

Discussions of race are everywhere and nowhere in 2025. On one hand, President Donald Trump is openly insulting Somali immigrants, describing entire nations as "shithole" countries, and insisting that the most persecuted class of humans are white South Africans. On the other, none of this is actually registering as anything other than Trump being Trump, and so when the Supreme Court agrees to revisit a foundational doctrine like birthright citizenship, too many of us shrug it off.

While, as Benjamin Franklin quipped, it may be that nothing is certain but death and taxes, only the former can be considered the great equalizer. Death comes for us all, regardless of our social or economic status. Taxes, on the other hand, have always been far more complicated. Vanessa S. Williamson's new book, The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History, takes us on a fascinating journey through the history of taxation from colonization to the present day.