authoritarianism

COMMENTARY

Vote. The future of democracy in America depends on voters shedding apathy and getting engaged

BY: - November 1, 2022

“I think the biggest threat [to democracy] will be if the exhausted majority is too tired to get engaged. I think that’s a threat: Good people doing nothing or good people sitting on the sidelines.”-Tim Ryan, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio.  History is replete with examples of good people doing nothing while bad […]

COMMENTARY

Authoritarianism v. democratic self-governance: The battle of the ages

BY: - April 21, 2022

ROME — When I’m not helping chronicle the charade of governance that is Ohio policy and politics, I’m most often studying the history of human civilization, with an emphasis on America and antiquity. Taking a short hiatus from the circus maximus of the Ohio Statehouse, standing amidst the ruins of the Roman Forum, I pondered […]

COMMENTARY

Putin and Russia are fascist – a political scientist shows how they meet the textbook definition

BY: - March 31, 2022

When Vladimir Putin unleashed an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the Ukrainian media, public and policymakers almost unanimously began calling the Russian president and the state he leads “rashyst.” The term is a hybrid of a derogatory moniker for Russia – “rasha” – and “fascist.” Ukrainians did so for two reasons. First, […]

COMMENTARY

Orwell only wrote one introduction of an Animal Farm foreign translation. It was for Ukraine

BY: - March 17, 2022

Eric Blair, pen name George Orwell, was not perfect as a person, but then, who is? Nevertheless, Orwell got the three major issues of the 20th Century right: He was anti-imperialist, anti-fascist and anti-Communist/anti-Stalinist. Orwell’s military days in Burma taught him the human atrocity of the British Empire: “I had already made up my mind […]