Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen

Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen

By Burt CohenSociety & CultureNewsPolitics
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Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen episodes

  • As Schools Open Again: The Moms for Liberty Nightmare
    It’s almost time for the start of schools. Of course all parents want to protect their children from inappropriate material. But when “parental rights” mean teachers are forbidden from mentioning homosexuality or racism because that means teachers are “grooming” kids for pedophilia or Chinese communism, liberty is under threat. Hypocritically enough, the vanguard of this threat is from something called Moms For Liberty. On this show, from her writing in The New Republic, Laura Jedeed examines the serious chilling effect on teachers and education. And how social media has encouraged people to believe what they want. Classes and elections coming up!
    56 min
  • Veterans are Poorly Treated Pentagon Employees
    Why do America’s veterans have to beg for help on TV ads? How is it that our government refuses to pay the true costs of war? On this show, senior veterans policy analyst Suzanne Gordon talks about the new book she co-authored “Our Veterans: Winners, Losers, Friends, and Enemies on the New Terrain of Veteran Affairs.” Did you know spending for veterans health care is “discretionary” but weapons systems are not? Mere game day celebrations of veterans does not cut it.
     
    1 hr
  • Militaristic Foreign Policy Fails; There are Other Options
    The same old same old foreign policy of military first does not enhance our national security. On this show historian Leon Fink, author of Undoing the Liberal World Order, sees that the causes of terrorism are untouched by our reliance on neoliberal, top down military approaches. People in third world countries see us as militarists who do nothing to help them. But we have in fact implemented better policies, helping impoverished suffering people and it’s worked in places like South Africa, Costa Rica, and India.  Addressing the causes of suffering and anger works far better than bombs and bullets. And is far less expensive.
    58 min
  • 75 Years of National Security State: America?
    You may have thought it began after 9/11. But it really all started in 1947, as National Security Archive Scoville Fellow Rachel Santarsiero explains. The focus of our huge arsenal then quickly shifted from Germany and Japan to the perceived threats of the Soviet Union.  Of course our long established  national security state is a far cry from what America’s founders envisioned. And really: has it made us more secure?
    1 hr
  • What It Took–and Still Does–For Democrats to Win
    America today is not the America of the past. The Republican Party is unrecognizable. But in his new book What it Took to Win, author and history professor  Michael Kazin, discerns a theme that still works as we head into election season. Among the varied demographics, people want the government to work for them. Today’s right plays on a sense that it works for “those people,” not “us.” This fear of insecurity has fed the right wing culture war. Americans are consistently against corporate greed; social movements can make it safe for politicians to say that.  Kazin says identifying and promoting “Moral Capitalism” works. Give a listen!
    59 min
  • Nuclear Power is Racist, Sexist, and Ageist: You Gotta Listen
    The comfort of colonial powers relied on them not seeing the damage to exploited nations. So it is with mining and milling the uranium for nuclear power. Victims then as now are people without power, indigenous populations which are health care deprived. As Beyond Nuclear’s Linda Pentz Gunter describes in this podcast, the politically powerful nuclear industry relied on a model called Reference Man–young and white–to argue nuclear was safe. Give a listen and see how the imagined solution of “all of the above” is wrong for a green future.
    1 hr
  • Josh Hawley and the Republican Push for Toxic Masculinity
    The Missouri Senator voted against one thing that can actually address what he says is the problem. Where once men felt pride in what they contributed to family and community as sole breadwinners, that is gone. The anxiety is real. In her New York Times essay, guest Liza Featherstone takes on Hawley’s myths. Nostalgia for a mythical order seems to calm the fear many feel in a changing world. Where there is greater freedom for all genders to be who they are, many straight men feel insecurity. Right wing Senator Hawley is using this for political gain. What worked is what FDR brought to the men in things like the Civilian Conservation Corps. Biden’s Build Back Better would do the same. What can progressives do? Lots.
    1 hr
  • Feminist Prejudice Against Women in Hijabs?
    Do liberal women feel that their culture is superior? Among women who feel liberated, what is it about the sight of Muslim women in traditional hijabs that so bothers many? In her new book Unruly Women; Race, Neocolonialism, and the Hijab, author Professor Falguni A. Sheth looks at the disquieting prejudice and fear of The Other, those Muslim women who choose other than the underlying sartorial norms. In what ways is this part of the continuing structural injustice carried over from colonialism? Why must underlying norms be imposed on all cultures? How does anti-Muslim discrimination affect their freedom, their lives? Sheth sees hope for change in today’s younger generation women.
    1 hr
  • Outsourcing War: Making Atrocities Invisible
    Private Security Firms; just part of doing business, right? Blackwater was America’s version in Iraq; The Wagner Group is Russia’s today in Ukraine and Africa. Atrocities in the Donbass region of Ukraine? Russia cynically said, that’s not us, it’s “little green men.” History Professor Emeritus Dr. Lawrence Wittner on this show reveals the major role of mercenaries, soldiers of fortune in the pay of Russian oligarchs. And they boost their great wages with wholesale looting. The United Nations is not doing it’s job.
    1 hr
  • “Conservatives” Are Disastrous to Civil Liberties
    The opposite of conservatism is a police state. Yet public figures who call themselves conservative are crushing many of our traditional civil liberties and our legal rights. This according to Jacob Hornberger founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation. The drug war, the national security state, cracking down on refugees. Our founders intended a limited government republic, not today’s national security state. Hornberger argues for an end to the drug war, abolish ICE, preserve our heritage of free movement of people. Conserve our republic, end the American empire. A very provocative discussion.
    1 hr

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