… The Democrats have never been a natural opposition party, or a particularly effective one. Republicans from Reagan to the Tea Party broadly believed in reducing government, as the anti-tax activist Grover Norquist famously put it, “to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it […] Read more »
Is Facebook a site of political engagement for young people?
… The Civic Network project systematically compared young people’s use of social media for civic and political engagement in Australia, the USA and UK, using: in-person focus groups with affinity groups of student activists; online surveys of over 3600 young people aged 16-29, using original measures of political participation and […] Read more »
Murray and Middlebury: What Happened, and What Should Be Done?
Dr. Charles Murray, a political scientist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, came to Middlebury last Thursday to discuss his book Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. … But when Murray was introduced, the student crowd erupted in a barrage of chants and sign-waving designed to […] Read more »
Perilous Times for Both Parties
… Republicans are experiencing a mirror image of the outrage that Democratic members of Congress faced back in 2009 and 2010. The people and nature of their complaints are different, but what we are seeing looks like what we saw from the Tea Party folks from the other end of […] Read more »
The Reluctant Activist’s Guide to Protest
Black Lives Matter. Occupy Wall Street. The Tea Party. Even before the nationwide protests in response to Donald Trump’s election, civil unrest was roiling American politics. Citizens who a generation ago might never have considered speaking out are taking to the streets, shouting down officials at town halls, and deluging […] Read more »
Large Majorities See Checks and Balances, Right to Protest as Essential for Democracy
Large majorities of the public, Republicans and Democrats alike, say open and fair elections and a system of governmental checks and balances are essential to maintaining a strong democracy in the United States. However, there is less consensus about the importance of other aspects of a strong democracy – notably, […] Read more »