Daniel Aaron Lazar » US GOV: Pol Culture

T.R. Reid: Looking Overseas For ‘Healing Of America’

Dan Lazar — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:27:59 +0000

Journalist and author T.R. Reid set out on a global tour of hospitals and doctors’ offices, all in the hopes of understanding how other industrialized nations provide affordable, effective universal health care. The result: his book The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care.

Reid is a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post — in whose pages he recently addressed five major myths about other countries’ health-care systems — and the former chief of the paper’s London and Tokyo bureaus.

Listen to this Fresh Air Episode

Sick in the head: Why America won’t get the health-care system it needs

Dan Lazar — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:16:53 +0000

When Congress is in session, Michigan Congressman John Conyers holds a regular public meeting at the Rayburn House Office Building, where, if you happen to be interested in health policy, you are welcome to join like-minded citizens in considering the merits of HR 676, also known as The National Health Insurance Bill. If signed into law, HR 676 would require a single payer (the government) to provide health insurance to every American, which is likely why most Americans have never heard of it. Nearly every other wealthy nation has a single-payer system, but in the United States-or at least in Congress-single payer generally is understood to be too utopian, too extreme, and certainly too socialist for domestic consumption.

I was surprised, therefore, when I went to one of the meetings in July and found a hundred or so people stuffed into a stately conference room. Everyone had a notebook, but no one had the bored look of a political reporter. These were activists, young and mostly black or Hispanic. Conyers, along with several guest speakers, sat behind balusters on a low platform that crossed the width of the room. At the other end, near the door, someone had arranged a banquet table potluck style, with tins of homemade brownies and cupcakes. I pushed my way to one of the few remaining chairs in the back as Conyers, now at the lectern and speaking softly into a microphone, asked whether anyone would like to address the gathering.

A fine analysis from Harper’s

On Civic Engagement & Civil Society

Dan Lazar — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:02:01 +0000

The Center for Civil Society, What is Civil Society?

AP Comp Gov Guru Ken Wedding on Civil Society

Walter Lippmann from The Phantom Public

Reading Response for Above Documents

Political Culture

Dan Lazar — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:56:06 +0000

Consider the following news headlines from across the globe:

The Russian president proclaims that he will appoint hundreds of political officials who until then had been elected by the people, and no one in the country seems to object.
The Chinese government sends troops to arrest farmers who refuse to give up their land to state-sponsored developers as China continues to bolster its market economy.
The citizens of Mexico vote the one-party system out of its 75-year rule by selecting a president from a party on the right in 2000, but now seem to be leaning toward a leftist president candidate for 2006.
Almost every week, the British prime minister faces the opposition party leader toe to toe in a “question hour” that encourages even members of his own party to hurl insults at him.

How do we make sense of the actions that we read about in the news? Start by reading this

Teaching Against Idiocy

Dan Lazar — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 18:54:41 +0000

Contemplating the root of the word “idiocy” leads Dr. Walter
Parker to explore the challenge that democratic societies
face of developing public-minded citizens. The schools,
he argues, are the most likely institutions to succeed in
that task.

The Article

The Response Sheet