News – Politics – Opinion – Podcasts
Finn Andreen 
The expression “fight for your rights” is usually associated with socialism. Socialists and statists fought—and still fight—for positive rights, as in FDR’s famous “freedom from want,” which suggests that the people have the right to receive from the state the material conditions necessary for an arbitrarily defined “dignified” life, such as housing, healthcare, education, pension, and various … Read more
Why has the United States’ government become so politically dysfunctional? How can it be that the nation—partially founded on John Locke’s principles of liberty and Montesquieu’s concept of separation of powers—today has such a corrupt and oligarchic federal government? As the young political union that it was in 1781, based on the Articles of Confederation, the United States was unique. Unlike the nation-states of the … Read more
With the advent of representative democracy over a century ago in most of the West, the popular belief was that the “rule of the few” would be relegated to the dustbin of history. This never happened, of course, as has become clearer to the “many” over the decades. Indeed, the ruling Western oligarchy has become more visible … Read more
In these politically turbulent times, the “illusion of democracy is fading worldwide” as one pundit wrote recently. There is a growing sense in the West that “democracy” is not working well, but there is not yet a full and clear recognition of that fact. Michel Maffesoli, honorary professor at the Sorbonne in Paris, has been saying already for several … Read more