Quotes About Political

Even the package of attributes that we call modernity was a result not of some inherent sociological process, a move out of tradition, but of a vicious geopolitical competition in which a state had to match the other great powers in modern steel production, modern militaries, and a modern, mass-based political system

Revolution results not from determined crowds in the streets but from elite abandonment of the existing political order. The food demonstrations as well as strikes revealed that the autocratic regime had already hollowed out. Almost no one would defend it.

Sergei Kryzhanovsky, who handled the disbursements to the Union of Russian People and similar organizations, saw no distinction between the political techniques and social program of the far right—redistribution of private property from plutocrats to the poor—and

In the two weeks before the first Duma opened, between April 10 and 25, 1906, the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party convoked its 4th Congress under the slogan of "unity.

Jesus—nailed to the cross—appears powerless and defeated (15: 29–30). As Mark so darkly paints it, the scene is a tragic paradox: Despite the seeming triumph of religious and political forces allied against him, Jesus is neither guilty nor a failure. The failure lies in humanity's collective inability to recognize the sufferer's inestimable value, to see in him God's hand at work.

How could anyone believe that a political system could provide all of the goods and services a people needed without cost? A daily gratification that would eliminate greed, selfishness, miserliness, and infidelity. A place where man could become noble, strong, and courageous. Crime, violence, and social ills would vanish. It's absurd. The experiment called the Soviet Union only proved that none of that is possible.

The reach of federal criminal statutes was troubling to Joselyn. They had become so broad that they virtually mimicked every state crime. The protection of double jeopardy had become a joke. If a defendant was acquitted at the state level, but the crime violated notions of political rectitude, the defendant would be tried again at the federal level. This was now done routinely in high-profile cases where political points could be made by a president or his attorney general. While

Because poverty is a symptom—of the absence of a workable economy built on credible political, social, and legal institutions.

Poverty is a symptom—of the absence of a workable economy built on credible political, social, and legal institutions.

Amplification created an entirely new kind of political event: mass rallies oriented around individual speakers.

Our greatest enemies are ultimately not our political adversaries but entropy, evolution (in the form of pestilence and the flaws in human nature), and most of all ignorance—a shortfall of knowledge of how best to solve our problems.

Nonetheless, a movement within the American political right, heavily underwritten by fossil fuel interests, has prosecuted a fanatical and mendacious campaign to deny that greenhouse gases are warming the planet.47 In doing so they have advanced the conspiracy theory that the scientific community is fatally infected with political correctness and ideologically committed to a government takeover of the economy.

As we will see in chapter 20, Trump's success, like that of right-wing populists in other Western countries, is better understood as the mobilization of an aggrieved and shrinking demographic in a polarized political landscape than as the sudden reversal of a century-long movement toward equal rights.

Political ideologies, too, cannot be defined in terms of assumptions or values, but only as rival versions of the metaphor that SOCIETY IS A FAMILY. The political right likens society to a family commanded by a strict father, the political left to a family cared for by a nurturant parent.

Day-to-day political debates are also contests between metaphors. Citizens are not rational and pay no attention to facts, except as they fit into frames, and the frames are fixed in the neural structures of [their] brains. In George W. Bush's first term, for example, he promised tax relief, which frames taxes as an affliction, the reliever as a hero, and anyone obstructing him as a villain.

It would be nice to see people earn brownie points for acknowledging uncertainty in their beliefs, questioning the dogmas of their political sect, and changing their minds when the facts change, rather than for being steadfast warriors for the dogmas of their clique.

When Tetlock was asked at a public lecture to forecast the future of forecasting, he said, "When the audience of 2515 looks back on the audience of 2015, their level of contempt for how we go about judging political debate will be roughly comparable to the level of contempt we have for the 1692 Salem witch trials."49

As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones.

The Darwinian approach to sex is often attacked as being antifeminist, but that is just wrong. Indeed, the accusation is baffling on the face of it, especially to the many feminist women who have developed and tested the theory. The core of feminism is surely the goal of ending sexual discrimination and exploitation, an ethical and political position that is in no danger of being refuted by any foreseeable scientific theory or discovery.

In The Blank Slate I argued that two extreme visions of human nature—a Tragic vision that is resigned to its flaws, and a Utopian vision that denies it exists—define the great divide between right-wing and left-wing political ideologies.154

When Tetlock was asked at a public lecture to forecast the nature of forecasting, he said, "When the audience of 2515 looks back on the audience of 2015, their level of contempt for how we go about judging political debate will be roughly comparable to the level of contempt we have for the 1692 Salem witch trials.

I would love to be associated with some sports organization. I was a journalism major. That's kind of intriguing, to do something in the political-commentary arena.

Such people have a perfect right to their opinions and actions, if they remain lawful. But they have no reasonable claim to public funding. If radical right-wingers were receiving state funding for political operations disguised as university courses, as the radical left-wingers clearly are, the uproar from progressives across North America would be deafening.

males who stay on top longer are those who form reciprocal coalitions with their lower-status compatriots, and who pay careful attention to the troupe's females and their infants. The political ploy of baby-kissing is literally millions of years old.