Democracy's Little Self-Help Book


Book Description

A blank page in front of a writer possesses the chance to create a masterpiece. The truth that it may or may not exist is what makes it so unique. While inspiration comes at any moment, it's the rush of passion from a novice love that excites our entire demeanor. This same fiery passion, if left unattended, will diminish in time until its embers are the only remembrance of its existence. Unknown to some, this is all a part of the revolution of life. Idealistically, life revolves around four seasons summer, autumn, winter and spring. Our reaction to these inevitable changes is what defines who we are. You must first identify what you want out of a situation, and then take the necessary steps to achieve it. Whether it's the courage to tell someone how you feel, the heart to express your desires if they are not being met, or the strength to let go of someone that is holding you back, you are the master of your fate. Don't limit yourself to what you can and cannot do. In the back of our minds we are all searching for the same thing the opportunity to love and be loved. Expressing that, for some, is a difficult thing. The question remaining is it possible to be inspired by an experience that isn't yours? Universality tells us yes, and Barely Breathing is an example of such an instance.




The Little Blue Book


Book Description

Provides guidelines for United States Democrats to connect moral values to important policies, using practical tactics to guide political discourse away from extreme positions.




Mechanisms of Democracy


Book Description

What institutional arrangements should a well-functioning constitutional democracy have? Most of the relevant literatures in law, political science, political theory, and economics address this question by discussing institutional design writ large. In this book, Adrian Vermeule moves beyond these debates, changing the focus to institutional design writ small. In established constitutional polities, Vermeule argues that law can and should - and to some extent already does - provide mechanisms of democracy: a repertoire of small-scale institutional devices and innovations that can have surprisingly large effects, promoting democratic values of impartial, accountable and deliberative government. Examples include legal rules that promote impartiality by depriving officials of the information they need to act in self-interested ways; voting rules that create the right kind and amount of accountability for political officials and judges; and legislative rules that structure deliberation, in part by adjusting the conditions under which deliberation occurs transparently or instead secretly. Drawing upon a range of social science tools from economics, political science, and other disciplines, Vermeule carefully describes the mechanisms of democracy and indicates the conditions under which they can succeed.




Democracy in Small Groups


Book Description

Drawing from years of experience and study, John Gastil offers a variety of solutions to the problems commonly faced by small, democratic groups. He thoroughly explores the dynamics of practising democracy, including the relationship between speaking rights and listening responsibilities; the importance of full access to information and agenda setting; and ways to practice democracy in personal, family and neighbourhood life. Throughout, he enriches his suggestions with detailed descriptions of the dynamics within a co-operative grocery store. To help readers to choose the democratic structure most appropriate to their group, the book also surveys the full range of democratic processes -- including consensus, majority rule, and proportional outcomes.




Democracy Is Self-Government


Book Description

Mr. Percival provides an original and entirely new concept of True Democracy, where personal and national affairs are brought under the spotlight of eternal truths. This is not a political book, as generally understood. It is an unusual series of essays that sheds light on the direct connection between the conscious self in every human body and the affairs of the world in which we live. At this crucial period in our civilization, new powers of destruction have emerged that could sound the parting knell for life on earth as we know it. And yet, there is still time to stem the tide. Percival tells us that each human being is the source of all causes, conditions, problems and solutions. Therefore, we each have an opportunity, as well as a duty, to bring eternal Law, Justice, and Harmony to the world. This begins with learning to govern ourselves - our passions, vices, appetites, and behavior. The purpose of this book is to point the way.--H. W. Percival.




Rescuing Democracy


Book Description

This book proposes a new institution -- the 'People's Forum' -- to enable democratic governments to effectively address long-running issues like global warming and inequality. It would help citizens decide what strategic problems their government must fix, especially where this requires them to suffer some inconvenience or cost. The People's Forum is first based on a new diagnosis of government failure in democracies. The book tests its own analyses of government failure by seeing whether these might help us to explain the failures of particular democracies to address (and in some cases, to even recognize) several crucial environmental problems. The essential features of a new design for democracy are described and then compared with those of previous institutional designs that were also intended to improve the quality of democratic government. In that comparison, the People's Forum turns out to be not only the most effective design for developing and implementing competent policy, but also the easiest to establish and run. The latter advantage is crucial as there has been no success in getting previous designs into actual trial practice. It is hoped that this book may inspire a small group to raise the money to set up and run the People's Forum. Then, as citizens see it operating and engage with it, they may come to regard the new Forum as essential in helping them to deliberate long-running issues and to get their resulting initiatives implemented by government. Smith also discusses how the People's Forum must be managed and how groups with different political ideologies may react to it. An Afterword sets out the method by which this design was produced, to help those who might want to devise an institution themselves. The new concepts in environmental science that the book develops to test its diagnosis are applied in an Appendix to outline crucial options for the future of Tasmania. Similar options apply to many countries, states and provinces. As indicated above, those choices are currently beyond the capacity of democratic governments to address and in some cases, even to recognize. But the People's Forum may lift them out of that morass.




Democracy: A User's Guide


Book Description




Democracy's Edge


Book Description

Three out of five Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, feel our country is headed in the wrong direction. America is at the edge, a critical place at which we can either renew and revitalize or give in and lose that most precious American ideal--democracy--and along with it the freedom, fairness, and opportunities it assures. Democracy's Edge is a rousing battle cry that we can--and must--act now. From Jefferson to Eisenhower, presidents from both parties have warned us of the danger of letting a closed, narrow group of business and government officials concentrate power over our lives. Yet today, a small and unrepresentative group of people is making vital decisions for all of us. But this crisis is only a symptom, Lappé argues. It's a symptom of thin democracy, something done to us or for us, not by or with us. Such democracy is always at risk of being stolen by private interests or extremist groups, left and right. But there is a solution. The answer, says Lappé, is Living Democracy, a powerful yet often invisible citizens' revolution surging in communities across America. It's not random, disjointed activism but the emergence of a new historical stage of democracy in which Americans realize that democracy isn't something we have but something we do. Either we live it or lose it, says Lappé.




Disordered Minds


Book Description

Disordered Minds offers a compelling and timely account of the dangers posed by narcissistic leaders, and provides a stark warning that the conditions in which this psychopathy flourishes - extremes of social inequality and a culture of hyper-individualism - are the hallmarks of our present age. 'An excellent account of how malignant narcissism is evident in the lives of the great dictators, and how the conditions in which this psychopathy flourishes have returned to haunt us.' Dr Kieran Keohane, editor of The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization




Democracy Without Nations?


Book Description

Can Europe survive after abandoning the national loyalties--and religious traditions--that provided meaning? And what will happen to the United States as it goes down a similar path? The eminent French political philosopher Pierre Manent addresses these questions in his brilliant meditation on Europe's experiment in maximizing individual and social rights. By seeking to escape from the "national form," he shows, the European Union has weakened the very institutions that made possible liberty and self-government in the first place. Worse still, the "spiritual vacuity" that characterizes today's secular Europe--and, increasingly, the United States--is ultimately untenable.