Luke Savage is the author of The Dead Center: Reflections on Liberalism and Democracy After the End of History and a writer on Substack.
There are moments when even the most committed of democrats find themselves despairing of political democracy. But the system has proven again and again to be the last best hope of ordinary people in defending their pursuit of happiness against tyrants of all stripes — both public and private.
Watching Meghan Markle and Prince Harry talk to Oprah about the depraved monarchy last night, I couldn't help but wonder why I live in a country where the Queen is the head of state. Canada needs to dump the British monarchy and never look back.
Despite the pious wishes of many leading Democrats, the “good old” Republican Party is never coming back. Over the past four decades, GOP leaders set out to transform the party into the perfect vessel for Trumpian extremism — and they succeeded beyond their wildest nightmares.
Here's a documentary no one asked for: a Van Jones and Meghan McCain production arguing that the problem with America isn't poverty and exploitation, but political divisiveness. It's warmed-over centrism that won't solve any of the problems ailing the United States.
Under capitalism, automation destroys jobs. In a socialist society, it could free us from work and offer untold leisure to all.
Pete Buttigieg, a shape-shifting knockoff of the Obama original, has written a book about the importance of Trust — a surprising topic for a politician who elicits suspicion every time he opens his mouth. Can we just let bootleg Obama wander off into obscurity?
What a surprise — the Texas energy disaster has been turned into a yet another culture war scrimmage field, pitting right-wing advocates of fossil fuels against liberal supporters of renewable energy. But the red vs. blue framing conceals something important: when it comes to the climate, Texans are far to the left of their representatives.
The Democrats' confused and inept handling of the final stage of the impeachment trial revealed the contradiction at the heart of the party's politics: whether it's trying to represent bold change or simply a return to the pre-Trump status quo.
For decades, presidents have used their power to declare emergencies to sideline badly needed regulations and entrench the national security state. Now a group of Congress members led by AOC is proposing that those powers be used for good: to force action to avoid a climate catastrophe.
Lawmakers and wonks who insist on means-testing every government program like to posture as champions of the poor and downtrodden. But the fake Robin Hood act is just a cover for their deep-seated suspicion of the welfare state.
The GameStop saga was more than a simple tale of upstart traders taking on big business. But it highlighted again how disconnected Wall Street is from ordinary workers — and new polling finds that even more Americans now resent Wall Street.
From last year’s Democratic primaries to this year’s Biden agenda, TV news coverage of the health care debate is outrageously skewed against single-payer reform. To understand why, we need look no further than their business model.
By one estimate, Elon Musk owns more than a quarter of all active satellites orbiting Earth. Though his fantasy of becoming emperor of Mars probably won't materialize, we have to scale back the unchecked power of deranged Bond villain types like Musk before it extends from Earth to the skies.
When tech platforms, regulatory agencies, and social media companies conspire to swat down share purchases that get in Wall Street’s way, they’re doing us all a favor: they're showing us the ruthlessly hierarchical reality of neoliberalism behind the friendly mask.
We’ll have to wait to find out whether Joe Biden’s domestic agenda will actually reflect the surprisingly progressive noises he’s been making since his swearing in. But the exultant days and weeks surrounding Barack Obama’s inauguration offer a cautionary tale.
In his inauguration speech Wednesday, Joe Biden promised health care that will be “secure for all.” But no amount of rhetorical triangulation can erase the fact that a single-payer system is the only viable alternative to the status quo.
Bernie Sanders’s proposal to create a national emergency health insurance plan could have a transformative effect on the national health care debate, long after the COVID pandemic is over. But that plan, along with any other progressive policies, will be rendered moot if Joe Biden sticks to his insistence on seeking Republican support in Congress.
Joe Biden used to brag that he practically wrote the Patriot Act, the Bush-era law that massively increased government surveillance powers. Given his purported plan to pass a new domestic terrorism law once in office, the danger is real that the January 6 Capitol attack will be used as an excuse to severely curtail our civil liberties.
The promise of $2,000 survival checks helped the Democrats gain control of the Senate. They should send them out immediately, and absorb the lesson of this election: when Republicans are forced to confront bold proposals to help the broad working-class majority, they lose.
Donald Trump has long stoked the kind of abhorrent far-right action that we saw storm the Capitol today. But it’s not just Trump who deserves the blame: mainstream conservatives created this monster, too.