Dlittle30

LATEST ARTICLES ( 891 )

• Maintaining Social Resilience

  

  What is needed for a community of diverse people and groups to maintain its resilience in the face of hateful language, incidents, and provocations? Read more

  Posted on 31 January 2026 SOCIETY

• How Democracies Die

  

  image: Senator Josh Hawley salutes January 6 insurrectionSteven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have written with growing alarm about the threat to our democracy... Read more

  Posted on 25 January 2026 SOCIETY

• The Dual State (1938)

  

  Ernst Fraenkel’s book The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship offers instructive and ominous reading today. Read more

  Posted on 16 January 2026 SOCIETY

• Making a Far-right Activist

  

  Far-right supporters of CasaPoundHow can we understand some of the factors that lead to the development of far-right beliefs and worldview in young people? Read more

  Posted on 26 November 2025 SOCIETY

• The Role of Political Education in Social Progress

  

  Stephen Esquith has spent much of his career observing, teaching, and engaging in “conflict societies”, and trying to develop an understanding of how best to... Read more

  Posted on 10 November 2025 SOCIETY

• Affirming Democracy

  

  If you are concerned about the fate of our democratic institutions, the rise of xenophobia and hate, and the rule of law, please consider visiting... Read more

  Posted on 06 November 2025 SOCIETY

• A Guide to Being a Sociologist

  

  Karl Marx ImaginedThe social world is more complex and heterogeneous than most parts of the natural world, with diverse causal processes, different tempos of... Read more

  Posted on 30 October 2025 SOCIETY

• Confronting Race Through Rawls's Political Philosophy

  Rawls believes that a just society must be a pluralistic society, and that means that it must be neutral across (reasonable) comprehensive conceptions of the... Read more

  Posted on 02 October 2025 SOCIETY

• Grounds for Impeachment

  In his speech to the top officers of the United States military Donald Trump has crossed the line from reckless right-wing authoritarian politician to aspiring... Read more

  Posted on 30 September 2025 SOCIETY

• Racial Assumptions in Western Political Philosophy

  

  A prior post asked whether liberal political philosophy can be “anti-racist”. Charles Mills addresses a related question in much more radical terms. Read more

  Posted on 24 September 2025 SOCIETY

• Can Liberal Political Philosophy Support Anti-racism?

  John Rawls and Philip Pettit agree about the idea that a liberal democracy depends on the idea that all citizens have equal liberties, rights, worth, and... Read more

  Posted on 05 September 2025 SOCIETY

• A Political Philosophy for an Inclusive Multicultural Democracy

  We might say that a political philosophy is a formulation of the normative ideals that the philosopher holds to be primary in implementing the moral and social... Read more

  Posted on 05 September 2025 SOCIETY

• The Consequences of a Trillion Dollars

  

  Many thoughtful people in the US are concerned about the effects that the 2025 federal budget reconciliation law will have on poor people in many states who... Read more

  Posted on 24 August 2025 SOCIETY

• Caillebotte's Silences

  

  A current exhibition of the paintings of Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) at the Art Institute in Chicago is quite remarkable. It demonstrates the eye, the... Read more

  Posted on 21 August 2025 SOCIETY

• Real Multicultural Democracies

  

  Chicago is a highly diverse city, and it is a good example of life in a multicultural democracy. The image above is a photo of the crowd on Navy Pier on a recen... Read more

  Posted on 12 August 2025 SOCIETY

• Ethnography of High-energy Physics

  

  Science proceeds through research communities whose participants share important and often distinctive features of thought and method. Read more

  Posted on 31 July 2025 SOCIETY

• Arrtificial Intelligence Tools for Historians

  

  Historical research may seem to be a field in which AI tools will be especially useful. Historians are often confronted with very large unstructured digital... Read more

  Posted on 19 July 2025 SOCIETY

• Stock Ownership as System-wide Exploitation?

  

  A prior post made an effort to gain greater analytical clarity concerning the unfairness involved in the separation between the “one percent” economy and the... Read more

  Posted on 26 June 2025 SOCIETY

• A New Form of Exploitation

  

  Much thinking about economic justice for working people has been framed by the nineteenth-century concept of “capitalism”: owners of enterprises constitute a... Read more

  Posted on 22 June 2025 SOCIETY

• Republicanism and Multicultural Democracy

  

  Philip Pettit’s writings about republicanism offer a valuable and distinctive perspective on individual freedom and the nature of a good society. Read more

  Posted on 25 May 2025 SOCIETY