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

  • One Nation Indivisible? No. Eleven Distinct Nations.
    With all the current discussion about ever-more inflamed divides in the currently united States, more people are wondering if we  really are one nation after all. It’s not just blue vs red, North vs South. There’s us here in Yankeedom. Then there’s New Netherlands, The Midlands, Tidewater, Greater Appalachia, The Deep South (of course), New France, The Far West, El Norte, The Left Coast, and First Nation. You know this is accurate. Colin Woodard, author of the acclaimed book “American Nations,” reveals a history of these rival regional nations and questions whether today’s boundaries will look the same in a hundred years. One Nation? Never was. Check out this thought-provoking interview.  It’s our past, present, and future.
    1 hr
  • Socialism/New Deal: It Saved Competitive Capitalism Then. Can it Now?
    When big gets too big, free market capitalism is stifled. The increased concentration of power and wealth undercuts economic freedom. The socialism of FDR’s New Deal very much helped capitalism become more competitive. A big, though lesser known, aspect of Roosevelt’s program was to confront monopoly power and spread economic freedom. In this timely discussion, Gilad Edelman, editor of the Washington Monthly uses the lens of history to ask: Are today’s young, Bernie-inspired leftist intellectuals just New Deal liberals? As newly nominated congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who upset a long-term centrist Democrat) argues: We are witnessing in embryo the  emergence of a new way of approaching left-wing politics. Hardly doctrinaire, victory appears to be possible.
    1 hr
  • The UK’s Brexit Shambles
    Much like the toxic combination of angry racist populism with the power of the financial elite here in America, the European Union has been a brake on this dangerous combination in England. Today the British Right’s push for the UK to exit from the EU, which won the popular vote in June of 2016, remains in a total shambles. So says Kenneth Surin, writer for Counterpunch and Professor Emeritus of Critical Theory at Duke University. In explaining what is happening in the current confusion, he warns that the power of their financial sector, the City of London (their version of Wall Street) combined with the anti-immigrant right may gain even more power should the “hard” Brexiteers succeed. Then again, if there is an election, Surin says the Conservatives would surely lose to the left-leaning Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn.
    1 hr
  • Evangelicals Had Been Pro-Choice and the NRA Was All About Gun Safety. Really.
    Since its founding after the Civil War the NRA was concerned about the proliferation of guns in America. They became a sportsmen’s gun club focused on responsibility and safety. And conservative  Christian evangelicals cited Bible references to say life began with the first breath outside the body. Then it all changed. Salon columnist Paul Rosenberg tells about what happened in 1968 to evangelicals and in 1977 to the gun lobby. It’s all a cynical right wing power play, he argues.
    1 hr
  • Report from Violent Nicaragua: The Truth Behind the Picture
    Reached somewhere he won’t specify in Nicaragua, our guest is protecting himself from killings, kidnappings, and the coordinated strategy of roadblocks.The Trump Administration and most of the mainstream press paints a picture of the Sandinista government turning against their own people. But Ben Savio, Professor of Development studies at the National Agrarian University, who’s lived in Nicaragua since 2012 reports on the realities. If it was a protest about social security cuts, why are young people at the barricades? The new street violence is clearly stage managed, Savio says, and those who have long been out of power are attempting a coup against Daniel and Rosario Ortega who were re-elected recently with about 70%. What the IMF recognized as a successful economy in a very troublesome region is the target of organized crime and right-wing forces.Very informative discussion.
    1 hr
  • 50,000 Kids Behind Bars// “Infest” and “Civility:” The Danger Lurking
    America is shocked at the sight of 2500 migrant kids in cages. But behind high walls are over 50,000 American kids.This is invisible for a reason. According to Professor Cara Drinan, expert on juvenile sentencing and criminal justice reform, if the aim is “corrections,” it is not working. Kids are clearly amenable to rehabilitation, but in jail one is either aggressor or victim. Real corrections can be done at less cost by investing at the front end of problems. And on part two The Forward’s language columnist Aviya Kushner delves into the power and historic danger of words like “infest” which Trump used to describe dark skinned immigrants seeking refuge in America. He may play dumb but Trump’s wordsmiths Bannon and Miller know exactly what they’re doing. And what is meant by the calls for “civility?” What’s the history behind that?
    1 hr
  • Left and Right Against Dumb Wars//Indian Kids Taken for Decades
    Donald Trump won a lot of support from conservative Americans who agreed our endless wars are nothing but a big waste. Of course he flipped positions since then but renowned professor Andrew Bacevich observes that there is still anger at the out-of-touch elites spending hundreds of billions foolishly. And that there is commonality between right and left which can change the policy (though not overnight). On part two Indian Country Today’s Mark Trahant talks about the long standing policy of the federal government removing indigenous kids from their parents and their culture. Sound familiar?
    58 min
  • Free Speech Not OK in War? The Lessons of Debs and LaFollette June 1918
    Is it treasonous to urge resistance to a war once America is in it? Most Americans opposed our entry into the First World War but once Wilson sent our men, some argued it was no longer OK to urge resistance. It was 100 years ago, in June of 1918 when socialist former presidential candidate Eugene Debs was put in jail for continuing to speak out. The irony of fighting a war “to make the world safe for democracy” while clamping down on freedoms was not lost on him or Republican US Senator “Fighting Bob” LaFollette of Wisconsin, whose colleagues sought to expel him for his continued outspoken opposition to the war. On this show, Smithsonian journalist Erick Trickey talks about what lessons from 100 years ago still apply today.
    1 hr
  • Erasing Net Neutrality, Crushing American Freedom
    The effects of net neutrality have been like the founding fathers dream: a truly free media open to all points of view, where even the smallest voice can reach millions. It’s logical then that the big internet service providers and their authoritarian partners in government would aim to crush it. On June 11th 2018, Net Neutrality was officially killed. But our guest Mike Ludwig of Truthout tells how Net Neutrality may yet be made to survive the intense pressure to crush it from the top down. Once average Americans understand what’s at stake, the clampdown on freedom may be reversed in the next election.
    1 hr
  • Meanness and Hatred Can’t Be Blamed on Trump: It’s Always Been There
    It may be out in the open now, and it is disconcerting to see and feel the blatant racism and hatred across America now. But maybe the ugly spirit of white supremacy may have been hidden from white people before  Trump but it has not been hidden from black Americans. Journalist William Hawes talks about historic factors that got us to the open hatred we see today. He even points out that mass killers like Timothy McVeigh and Norway’s Anders Breivik were ” violent thugs who saw themselves as victims.” He argues that part of the problem is the widespread belief in scarcity, when it’s time to reconsider that old notion.
    1 hr

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