Daniel Aaron Lazar

Two articles on China and religion

Two short articles. One on China and Tibetan Buddhism, the other on China vs. the Vatican.

Posted in AP China | No Comments »

A bit of cross-party parliamentary civility?

A Briton in America notices something about comparative politics. Britain’s House of Commons reeks of conflict. The rival parties glare at one another from opposite benches. Debates are barbed and sometimes vicious—especially during the gladiatorial spectacle of prime minister’s questions. America’s Congress is different. Members of the House of Representatives sit shoulder-to-shoulder in the shape of a horseshoe. Debates, such as they are, are marked by an exaggerated decorum. The casual observer might easily conclude that America has the more consensual form of politics and Britain the more adversarial.

…Compared with the total war that is American politics, the British version is sport (amateur sport at that: the $1 billion that Mr Obama is said to be seeking for his re-election campaign would pay for an entire British general election 20 times over).

A Bit of Cross party Civility Please?

Posted in AP Britain | No Comments »

Islam and democracy: Uneasy companions

Islamist spokesmen and leaders of the revived Islamist mainstream are bending over backwards to give reassurances that they will promote a peaceful, pluralistic and tolerant version of Islam. The rights of women and religious and ethnic minorities will be respected, they say, and the people’s democratic verdict will be accepted if they lose elections.

Whatever their doubts, most democrats in the Arab world reckon that Islamists who say they will abide peacefully by the rules of the game must be allowed—indeed encouraged—to participate in mainstream politics: far better than forcing them into a violent, conspiratorial underground. All the same, the well of mistrust on both sides runs deep.

Many liberals still think the Islamists, however mild they sound today, are bent on taking over in the long run, would abandon democracy once they got into power and would use every sort of chicanery and violence to achieve their goal.

Two articles on the relationship between Islam and democracy in light of the 2011 “Arab Spring”

Posted in AP Introductory Materials, AP Iran, AP Nigeria | No Comments »

Liberalism under attack in China

On May 23rd four people went to a police station in Beijing with a petition demanding justice. Victims of official wrongdoing often make such trips, and usually they are given short shrift. But this was no ordinary group of the downtrodden. The petition bore the names of nearly 10,000 people accusing a liberal intellectual of slandering Mao Zedong and attempting to overthrow the Communist Party itself. Emboldened by a chill political wind, diehard Maoists in China are rising to confront their critics.

The Maoists’ appeal for the arrest of Mao Yushi, a well-known economist (and no relation of the late chairman), is their most concerted public attempt in many years to put pressure on the government. A clutch of Maoist websites frequently vilify intellectuals such as Mr Mao. But campaigning openly for someone to be put on trial is unusual. It is a symptom of a recent escalation of ideological struggles between China’s West-leaning liberals and conservative hardliners.

Posted in AP China | No Comments »

Nigeria’s prospects: A man and a morass

Can the new government of Goodluck Jonathan clean up corruption and set enterprise free in Africa’s most populous country?

With Mr Jonathan’s inauguration on May 29th, and the formation of a new government, many expect a turnaround. Two-thirds of Nigerians think the election will change their lives, according to a poll conducted by the International Republican Institute, an American outfit that promotes democracy. “We dream,” says a girl shining shoes. “What else can we do?”

Read about Nigeria's prospects

Posted in AP Nigeria | No Comments »

The stupidity of Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan claimed that the Russian language had no word for “freedom.” (The word is “svoboda“; it’s quite well attested in Russian literature.) Ronald Reagan said that intercontinental ballistic missiles (not that there are any non-ballistic missiles—a corruption of language that isn’t his fault) could be recalled once launched. Ronald Reagan said that he sought a “Star Wars” defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U.S.S.R. Ronald Reagan professed to be annoyed when people called it “Star Wars,” even though he had ended his speech on the subject with the lame quip, “May the force be with you.” Ronald Reagan used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they’d both unite against an invasion from Mars. Ronald Reagan used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the “End Times” foreshadowed in the Bible. In the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan told Yitzhak Shamir and Simon Wiesenthal, on two separate occasions, that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of the Nazi death camps.

Read Hitchens’ takedown of Reagan from Slate

Posted in USH: Reagan Years | No Comments »

The End of History? by Francis Fukuyama

Francis Fukuyama  is an American political scientist, political economist, and author. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford. Before that he served as a professor and director of the International Development program at the School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University. He is best known for his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992), which argued that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies may signal the end point of humanity’s sociocultural evolution and become the final form of human government.

Read this article which is based on a lecture he presented at the University of Chicago.

“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. This is not to say that there will no longer be events to fill the pages of Foreign Affair’s yearly summaries of international relations, for the victory of liberalism has occurred primarily in the realm of ideas or consciousness and is as yet incomplete in. the real or material world. But there are powerful reasons for believing that it is the ideal that will govern the material world in the long run.”

Posted in USH: Cold War, World Civ-Cold War in West, World Civ-Post Cold War | No Comments »

Abolitionism Resources

PBS on Abolitionism

Cornell University’s abolitionism site: “I Will be Heard”

Posted in USH: Slavery & Abolitionism | No Comments »

Was Abe Lincoln a Racist?

Was Lincoln a Racist?

Shedding Lincoln Mantle (Foner)

Posted in USH: Civil War, USH: Slavery & Abolitionism | No Comments »

Slave Narratives

Library of Congress Selection of Slave Narratives

U of Virginia Slave Narrative Site

Posted in USH: Slavery & Abolitionism | No Comments »