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

  • Why To Not Give Up on the Democratic Party
    “Voting third party helps those you despise.” So argues Raymond Buckley, who recently ran for chair of the Democratic National Committee. The fact that the race was high in the news demonstrates the beginning success for necessary changes in the party. It is not, as many fear, the party of Clinton. The party has always been built from the grassroots, and the traditional liberal base of the party came exceptionally close to electing the candidate Buckley and Bernie Sanders supported: Keith Ellison. In this interview Buckley does not hold back in his insistence that the party break the “iron grip of consultants” and instead funnel that tremendous money to 50 state grassroots efforts. He pulls no punches in recognizing that “The DNC enabled Trump” to win. History takes time, there is no instant gratification. But progressives working steadily can bring us back to power.
     
    59 min
  • Out of Disaster A Liberal Renaissance in the 1920s: House of Truth
    Liberals were shocked by the outcome of the 2016 election. As they were in 1920 when Republicans put up Warren Harding, a big business Republican who campaigned and won on an America First message, stoking the public’s fear of immigrants and clamping down hard on freedoms of the press and of speech. Then liberals came roaring back to a point where today, many decades later, Republicans are still fighting to destroy liberalism’s significant accomplishments. In his new book, House of Truth: A Washington Political Salon and the Foundations of American Liberalism, author Brad Snyder shares the story of a townhouse near Dupont Circle which served as gathering place for such notables as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Felix Frankfurter, Walter Lippman, and Louis Brandeis, to name a few. Liberals ended up gaining power being out of power. Can their success be replicated today? Absolutely, Snyder argues: Focus now on the system of justice and we can link populist concerns with liberal values.
    1 hr
  • When They Killed Berta Caceres A Year Ago, She Multiplied
    Asleep in her home the night of March 2, 2016, Berta Caceres was murdered. The military police of Honduras are suspected. But the government failed to stop her work: there are many more Berta Carcereses today. A government getting much military aid and training from guess who, the US. From Honduras, her nephew Sylvio Carrillo speaks to us about what happened and why. She was a threat to the government, standing up for indigenous rights and against massive projects harming the environment and displacing local residents. Since 2009 when then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton OK’d the coup, it’s been what Carrillo calls a “crime syndicate pretending to be a government” But you and I can do something: there is The Berta Caceres Act moving its way through the US congress. Listen and you can tell the billionaire families in Honduras have not invested in phone lines lately.
    1 hr
  • Army Strategist: Misuse of American Power and the Chaos It Caused
    Imagine being a proud part of the military for decades, serving as strategist and then it lands on you: our policy is a failure. Major Danny Sjursen in his inaugural Tom Dispatch post writes from a unique perspective on what he came to recognize as a misuse of American military power and the serious damage it has caused. If people on the ground in those regions had had input into decision making, quite possibly we’d be in much better shape. Instead we made it so much worse and played right into the hands of our enemies.
    1 hr
  • Crushing The Power of Truth? Peter VanBuren and Nick Turse
    Telling the truth to power shouldn’t take courage, but it certainly does. On part one, Peter VanBuren, whistle-blower and author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, describes the major personal challenges government employees too often face in deciding to come forward with the truth.  On part two, celebrated author Nick Turse talks about his book: Kill Anything That Moves. Despite official denials, he found that atrocities like My Lai were not the result of a few bad apples, but were widespread and may have been policy. The young men who carried out the atrocities were also victims. Don’t we deserve the truth?
    1 hr
  • A Typhoon of Terror: American Blacks After “Freedom”
    Most of us believe what we were taught in elementary school: that enslaved blacks were freed by the Civil War. The truth is far grimmer. In this gripping discussion (recorded during Obama’s term) Douglas Blackmon, author of Slavery by Another Name, reveals that unlike the pre-war South, after the war and a brief period of freedom, slavery not only continued but expanded as it was no longer just rich white who could own slaves. And though a federal law outlawed slavery, all cases were sent to state and local courts. Which of course did nothing. Blackmon observes:  “The short period of liberation made the tragedy that much greater.” He reveals a disturbing history where neo-slavery only ended four days after the Pearl Harbor attack. Yes, 1941.
    0 min
  • The Disturbing Reality Behind Turkey and the Russian Jet
    The mainstream media paints a simple picture: Turkey was merely defending itself. But America’s ally, Turkey’s Erdogan, sees his greatest enemy as the Kurds as he works behind the scenes with ISIS. He doesn’t want Russia attacking ISIS and its cheap oil for Turkey. Meanwhile French President Hollande is working with, not against, Russia’s Putin focusing on ISIS, which is what Europeans and Americans see as their greatest enemy. This remarkable discussion with Salon foreign affairs columnist Patrick Lawrence is quite disturbing. We need to be aware of realities behind the headlines on this issue.
    1 hr

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