Contributions by:

Benjamin Barber

Occupy Wall Street: “We Are What Democracy Looks Like!”

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Given how extraordinarily successful it has been both in its own terms and in its capacity to grab the attention of the media, Occupy Wall Street has been  conveniently misunderstood by its supporters and detractors alike.  Recently,  Mayor Bloomberg  patronized it haughtily, saying “It’s fun and it’s cathartic — it’s, I don’t know, it’s entertaining…

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Liberal Values in the Age of Interdependence

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In 1976, the great pragmatic American liberal James MacGregor Burns, who was a student of the Roosevelt Era, was elected (rather surprisingly) as president of the American Political Science Association. He asked two young scholars on the left to organize his annual program for the 1976 American Political Science Association, which coincided with the American…

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Prudence or Principle? Why I will Vote for Obama and Why I Won’t Blame You This Year If You Don’t

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In 1968, although I had been elected a delegate for Gene McCarthy from Pennsylvania, I eventually  voted for Hubert Humphrey despite my deep opposition to the War in Vietnam and Humphrey’s refusal to condemn it. Anything to stop Richard Nixon from taking the White House. (He took it.) In 2000 I was vociferous in opposing…

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