Download or read book The Net Delusion written by Evgeny Morozov and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2012-02-28 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The revolution will be Twittered!" declared journalist Andrew Sullivan after protests erupted in Iran in June 2009. Yet for all the talk about the democratizing power of the Internet, regimes in Iran and China are as stable and repressive as ever. In fact, authoritarian governments are effectively using the Internet to suppress free speech, hone their surveillance techniques, disseminate cutting-edge propaganda, and pacify their populations with digital entertainment. Could the recent Western obsession with promoting democracy by digital means backfire? In this spirited book, journalist and social commentator Evgeny Morozov shows that by falling for the supposedly democratizing nature of the Internet, Western do-gooders may have missed how it also entrenches dictators, threatens dissidents, and makes it harder -- not easier -- to promote democracy. Buzzwords like "21st-century statecraft" sound good in PowerPoint presentations, but the reality is that "digital diplomacy" requires just as much oversight and consideration as any other kind of diplomacy. Marshaling compelling evidence, Morozov shows why we must stop thinking of the Internet and social media as inherently liberating and why ambitious and seemingly noble initiatives like the promotion of "Internet freedom" might have disastrous implications for the future of democracy as a whole.

Download or read book The Great Utopian Delusion written by Paul Cleveland and published by . This book was released on 2015-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Individual freedom and liberty are fundamental principles upon which a good society is based. Regrettably, those principles have been under attack for over one hundred years around the globe. The notion that paradise on earth can be achieved by coercive means has led to the spread of tyranny and despotism. Dr. Clarence B. Carson originally explained this truth in his 1978 book, The World in the Grip of an Idea.Proponents of the idea often argue that freedom promotes the worst kind of human behavior and, therefore, must be rejected if moral human action is to prevail. They argue that liberty in general and free enterprise in particular promote jealousy, envy, and greed. In their opinion, life on this planet would be better served if we substituted government control over individual human action. The assumption is that such a collectivization of life would promote the highest level of virtuous living amongst us. But, this assessment is simply wrong. In a 1996 article reflecting on his book, Carson observed:The notion that government is responsible for the material and intellectual well-­?being of populaces has great appeal, especially when it is accompanied by actual payments and subsidies from government. Many people become dependent upon government handouts, and even those who are not particularly dependent may lose confidence in their ability to provide for themselves. These feelings, attitudes, and practices are residues from the better part of a century of socialism in its several varieties. They have produced vastly overgrown governments and the politicalization of life. Governments and politicians are the problem, not the solution.Sturdy individuals, stable families, vital communities, limited government, and faith in a transcendent God who provides for us through the natural order and the bounties of nature-these alone can break the grip of the idea. -- Clarence B. Carson, "The World in the Grip of an Idea Revisited," The Freeman, May, 1996.

Download or read book Delusions of Power written by Robert Higgs and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Delusions of Power, economic historian Robert Higgs calls into question our ingrained notions concerning the nature of the state and democracy. Higgs uproots the foundation stone upon which the state's powers have rested and grown unchecked by the public. Beginning with the Founding Fathers and moving forward, Higgs reassesses the world wars, the Great Depression and the New Deal, and the financial debacle that began in 2008 with the view of demonstrating Americans' loss of liberties. He brings together the crisis in policymaking; key political actors and events; and the impact of war on the economy and civil liberties. For Higgs, war, and the cost of it, has had a major impact of war on the economy and civil liberties. For Higgs, war, and the cost of it, has had a major impact on American life and freedom. Through reading Higg's work, one will gain a new understanding of the state's power, democracy, and the issues threatening the pursuit of liberty. Book jacket.

Download or read book Liberty and Security written by Conor Gearty and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-03 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All aspire to liberty and security in their lives but few people truly enjoy them. This book explains why this is so. In what Conor Gearty calls our 'neo-democratic' world, the proclamation of universal liberty and security is mocked by facts on the ground: the vast inequalities in supposedly free societies, the authoritarian regimes with regular elections, and the terrible socio-economic deprivation camouflaged by cynically proclaimed commitments to human rights. Gearty's book offers an explanation of how this has come about, providing also a criticism of the present age which tolerates it. He then goes on to set out a manifesto for a better future, a place where liberty and security can be rich platforms for everyone's life. The book identifies neo-democracies as those places which play at democracy so as to disguise the injustice at their core. But it is not just the new 'democracies' that have turned 'neo', the so-called established democracies are also hurtling in the same direction, as is the United Nations. A new vision of universal freedom is urgently required. Drawing on scholarship in law, human rights and political science this book argues for just such a vision, one in which the great achievements of our democratic past are not jettisoned as easily as were the socialist ideals of the original democracy-makers.

Download or read book The Arena written by and published by . This book was released on 1898 with total page 916 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Liberal Delusion written by John Marsh and published by Arena books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is western civilisation based on a mistaken understanding of humanity? Fundamental to any society is its comprehension of human nature. It shapes attitudes and policies on a whole range of issues: interpersonal relations, child-rearing, discipline and punishment, economics and welfare. For millennia western societies were based on the idea that human nature is flawed. This was turned upside down 300 years ago during the Enlightenment by writers such as Rousseau, who argued that we are born good and later warped by parents and society; a liberal view of human nature which is now being challenged by scientific discoveries in the fields of the mind, the brain, and genetics (including the Human Genome), evolutionary psychology, and anthropology. This fundamental change has had profound effects. If we are essentially good then we can safely maximize freedom and abandon morality, religion and tradition. Many aspects of life have been liberalised - sexual behaviour, alcohol consumption, censorship, gambling, divorce laws and economic activity. Economic liberals thought free markets were rational and good and favoured minimal government interference and light-touch regulations. This led to the credit crunch and the greatest financial crisis since World War Two. Many parents now hesitate to discipline their own children. The belief that we are essentially good but corrupted by society has also influenced penal policy. Liberals see criminals as victims, not as wrongdoers; because surely no-one would choose to do something wrong. This is a world far removed from the self-sacrifice and fraternity shown during World War Two. It has not brought happiness but rather more alienated individuals. The outcome of egalitarian aims or methods has often missed its mark: e.g., in education it has led to the dumbing down of academic standards, grade inflation and a decline in social mobility. Egalitarian regimes from the French Revolution to the Soviet era have been amongst the most bigoted, brutal and bloody in history. The drive for greater social justice and fairness must remain an essential objective. There is, therefore, an urgent need to separate out the positive from the negative aspects of liberal thought and practice, as otherwise there is the risk of descent into moral anarchy and social disintegration.

Download or read book Liberal Delusion written by John Marsh and published by Arena books. This book was released on 2012-11-05 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is western civilisation based on a mistaken understanding of humanity? Fundamental to any society is its comprehension of human nature. It shapes attitudes and policies on a whole range of issues: interpersonal relations, child-rearing, discipline and punishment, economics and welfare. For millennia western societies were based on the idea that human nature is flawed. This was turned upside down 300 years ago during the Enlightenment by writers such as Rousseau, who argued that we are born good and later warped by parents and society; a liberal view of human nature which is now being challenged by scientific discoveries in the fields of the mind, the brain, and genetics (including the Human Genome), evolutionary psychology, and anthropology.This fundamental change has had profound effects. If we are essentially good then we can safely maximize freedom and abandon morality, religion and tradition. Many aspects of life have been liberalised - sexual behaviour, alcohol consumption, censorship, gambling, divorce laws and economic activity. Economic liberals thought free markets were rational and good and favoured minimal government interference and light-touch regulations. This led to the credit crunch and the greatest financial crisis since World War Two.Many parents now hesitate to discipline their own children. The belief that we are essentially good but corrupted by society has also influenced penal policy. Liberals see criminals as victims, not as wrongdoers; because surely no-one would choose to do something wrong. This is a world far removed from the self-sacrifice and fraternity shown during World War Two. It has not brought happiness but rather more alienated individuals. The outcome of egalitarian aims or methods has often missed its mark: e.g., in education it has led to the dumbing down of academic standards, grade inflation and a decline in social mobility. Egalitarian regimes from the French Revolution to the Soviet era have been amongst the most bigoted, brutal and bloody in history. The drive for greater social justice and fairness must remain an essential objective. There is, therefore, an urgent need to separate out the positive from the negative aspects of liberal thought and practice, as otherwise there is the risk of descent into moral anarchy and social disintegration.

Download or read book Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs written by Lisa Bortolotti and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2010 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is an interdisciplinary exploration of the nature of delusions. It brings together recent work in philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology and psychiatry, offering a comprehensive review of the philosophical issues raised by the psychology of normal and abnormal cognition.

Download or read book Liberty and Property written by Ludwig Von Mises and published by Ludwig von Mises Institute. This book was released on 1988 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Originally delivered as a lecture at Princeton University, October 1958, at the 9th meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society"--Page 7. Includes bibliographical references.

Download or read book Democracy and Liberty written by William Edward Hartpole Lecky and published by . This book was released on 1899 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Class Matters written by Steve Fraser and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A uniquely personal yet deeply informed exploration of the hidden history of class in American life From the decks of the Mayflower straight through to Donald Trump’s “American carnage,” class has always played a role in American life. In this remarkable work, Steve Fraser twines our nation’s past with his own family’s history, deftly illustrating how class matters precisely because Americans work so hard to pretend it doesn’t. He examines six signposts of American history—the settlements at Plymouth and Jamestown; the ratification of the Constitution; the Statue of Liberty; the cowboy; the “kitchen debate” between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev; and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech—to explore just how pervasively class has shaped our national conversation. With a historian’s intellectual command and a riveting narrative voice, Fraser interweaves these examples with his own past—including his false arrest on charges of planning to blow up the Liberty Bell during the Civil Rights era—to tell a story both urgent and timeless.

Download or read book The Defenders of Liberty written by Neema Parvini and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-05-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Defenders of Liberty presents a history of economic liberalism from the Renaissance to the present. It chronicles the tradition of thought that sees human nature as social yet self-interested, methodological individualism as its key analytical tool, and property rights as foundational to a civilised society. In the development of this way of thinking, it considers the contributions of many key thinkers including Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Richard Cantillon, A.J.R. Turgot, David Hume, Adam Smith, Nassau William Senior, Richard Cobden, Herbert Spencer, Jean-Baptiste Say, Carl Menger, William Stanley Jevons, Gaetano Mosca, Eugen Böhm-Bawerk, Vilfredo Pareto, Phillip Wicksteed, Edwin Cannan, Ludwig von Mises, Lionel Robbins, F.A. Hayek, W.H. Hutt, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Murray N. Rothbard, James M. Buchanan, and Thomas Sowell. The book contends that liberalism needs to be grounded in realism, and that it has been derailed whenever economists have deviated from an explicitly realist understanding of human nature, individualism and property rights. It argues that the cause of liberalism was compromised by errors in economic reasoning by such major figures as David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Alfred Marshall, A.C. Pigou, and John Maynard Keynes. In diagnosing what has gone wrong for liberalism in the twenty-first century, The Defenders of Liberty argues against substituting mathematical abstraction for causal realism; it opposes interventionist central banking; it seeks to recover economic liberalism from social and political liberalism, which are somewhat unrelated schools of thought; it resists a view of human nature rooted in selfishness or atomised individualism; and finally alerts defenders of freedom to the ruthless but effective language games played by their opponents. This book will be of interest to the educated general reader as well as undergraduates and postgraduates in disciplines such as economics, political theory and philosophy.

Download or read book Democratic Delusions written by Natalie Fenton and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2024-10-07 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A free media is inextricably linked to a healthy democracy, but in many parts of the world liberal democracies are deemed to be dying or on the demise – a demise that many forms of media have enabled while heralding themselves as democracy’s saviour. The hollowing out of democracy in these ways has left many people questioning the value of (neo)liberal democratic societies. What can we do about it? Democratic Delusions explores the potential of our media and tech systems to be democratic and contribute to a just and transformative democracy. This is only possible, Natalie Fenton argues, by first situating our political systems and mediated worlds within global capitalism. By interrogating different media and their relationship to seven key elements of democracy – power, participation, freedom, equality, public good, trust, and hope – the book asks: What is the response of society when the ability of news media to speak truth to power has been restricted by corporate logic? And, how do we tackle a deep-rooted market logic that shifts public debate towards private interest and marginalizes progressive perspectives? The book explores how these elements can be reimagined through newly conceived media and tech landscapes and, ultimately, what democracy might be in a future mediated world that places more power in the hands of more people. This is essential reading for students and scholars of media and communications, journalism, political communications, political science, and sociology.

Download or read book The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics written by Stephen Breyer and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sitting justice reflects upon the authority of the Supreme CourtÑhow that authority was gained and how measures to restructure the Court could undermine both the Court and the constitutional system of checks and balances that depends on it. A growing chorus of officials and commentators argues that the Supreme Court has become too political. On this view the confirmation process is just an exercise in partisan agenda-setting, and the jurists are no more than Òpoliticians in robesÓÑtheir ostensibly neutral judicial philosophies mere camouflage for conservative or liberal convictions. Stephen Breyer, drawing upon his experience as a Supreme Court justice, sounds a cautionary note. Mindful of the CourtÕs history, he suggests that the judiciaryÕs hard-won authority could be marred by reforms premised on the assumption of ideological bias. Having, as Hamilton observed, Òno influence over either the sword or the purse,Ó the Court earned its authority by making decisions that have, over time, increased the publicÕs trust. If public trust is now in decline, one part of the solution is to promote better understandings of how the judiciary actually works: how judges adhere to their oaths and how they try to avoid considerations of politics and popularity. Breyer warns that political intervention could itself further erode public trust. Without the publicÕs trust, the Court would no longer be able to act as a check on the other branches of government or as a guarantor of the rule of law, risking serious harm to our constitutional system.

Download or read book The God Child written by Stuart Rawlings and published by . This book was released on 2019-03-22 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The British Millennial Harbinger written by and published by . This book was released on 1852 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Great Delusion written by John J. Mearsheimer and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major theoretical statement by a distinguished political scholar explains why a policy of liberal hegemony is doomed to fail It is widely believed in the West that the United States should spread liberal democracy across the world, foster an open international economy, and build international institutions. The policy of remaking the world in America's image is supposed to protect human rights, promote peace, and make the world safe for democracy. But this is not what has happened. Instead, the United States has become a highly militarized state fighting wars that undermine peace, harm human rights, and threaten liberal values at home. In this major statement, the renowned international-relations scholar John Mearsheimer argues that liberal hegemony--the foreign policy pursued by the United States since the Cold War ended--is doomed to fail. It makes far more sense, he maintains, for Washington to adopt a more restrained foreign policy based on a sound understanding of how nationalism and realism constrain great powers abroad. The Great Delusion is a lucid and compelling work of the first importance for scholars, policymakers, and everyone interested in the future of American foreign policy.