Prophets and Patriots

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Braunstein
Keyword(s):  
Community Organizing ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
The Face ◽  
Speak Up ◽  
Political Divide

In the wake of the Great Recession, Americans across the political divide flocked to local citizens organizations, where they worked to refocus political attention on the needs of ordinary people like them. This book chronicles the efforts of two such groups—a progressive faith-based community organizing coalition and a conservative Tea Party group. At first glance, these groups could not seem more different: in addition to significant demographic differences between them, their members also lined up on opposite sides of nearly every national policy debate during this period. But these differences do not tell the whole story of these groups. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with both groups, this book reveals surprising similarities between their efforts that are typically not acknowledged, while also tracing more subtle differences between them that typically go unrecognized. It shows that in the face of rising anxiety and frustration, members of both groups chose to wake up, stand up, and speak up. They dedicated themselves to becoming active citizens, capable of inserting their voices, values, and knowledge into public debates about issues that impacted them. In so doing, they came to understand themselves as prophets and patriots, respectively, carrying forward the promise of American democracy. Yet when the groups set out to actually enact this vision – by holding government accountable and putting their faith in action – their styles of active citizenship diverged, reflecting different ways of imagining how American democracy ought to work and the proper role of active citizens within it.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Braunstein
Keyword(s):  
Active Citizenship ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Good Citizen ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
Democratic Tradition ◽  
Democratic Ideals

Chapter 7 summarizes the key findings and contributions of the book. First, it highlights the book’s contributions to understanding how broadly shared democratic ideals can refract into different understandings of what it means to be a good citizen in practice, and ultimately, different styles of engaging in active citizenship. It then discusses the implications of these findings for American democracy itself. Although Interfaith and the Patriots disagree about how democracy ought to work and the proper role of citizens within it, they share an abiding faith in the American democratic project itself. Moreover, the book suggests that this disagreement is not new, and that the complexity of America’s democratic tradition is both a blessing and a curse, fueling perpetual disagreement over what it means to be a good citizen, but also encouraging political commitment. It concludes by suggesting that as long as groups like Interfaith and the Patriots continue to cultivate and enact many different stories of America, and no single story becomes dominant, then citizens can productively interrogate their respective benefits and drawbacks.

Climate Engineering and the Playing God Critique

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura M. Hartman
Keyword(s):  
Human Agency ◽  
Aldo Leopold ◽  
Climate Engineering ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
Playing God ◽  
The Face ◽  
Contextual Awareness ◽  
Communal Responsibility ◽  
Emotional Level

Climate engineering is subject to the “playing God” critique, which charges that humans should not undertake to control nature in ways that seem to overstep the proper scope of human agency. This argument is easily discredited, and in fact the opposite—that we should “play God”—may be equally valid in some circumstances. To revive the playing God critique, I argue that it functions not on a logical but on a symbolic and emotional level to highlight nostalgia for functional dualisms in the face of the bewildering problem of climate change. It also raises significant questions about the virtue of those who might engineer the climate. These two concerns point to questions about the proper role of human agency. I use the scholarship of Aldo Leopold and H. Richard Niebuhr to argue for a model of human agency based on contextual awareness and responsive, communal responsibility. I conclude with some implications of this view for decision-makers engaging the topic of climate engineering.

scholarly journals Free Exercise and the Problem of Symmetry

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelson Tebbe
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Free Exercise ◽  
Free Exercise Clause ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Laws And Policies ◽  
Wrong Sort

56 Hastings Law Journal 699 (2005)This Article identifies a difficulty with the neutrality paradigm that currently shapes thinking about the Free Exercise Clause both on the Supreme Court and among its leading critics. It proposes a liberty component, shows how it would generate more attractive results than neutrality alone, and defends the liberty approach against likely objections.A controversial neutrality rule currently governs cases brought under the Free Exercise Clause. Under that rule, only laws and policies that have the purpose of discriminating against religion draw heightened scrutiny. All others are presumptively constitutional, regardless of how severely they burden religious practices.Critics have attacked the Court's rule with compelling normative arguments. Curiously, though, the leading academic critics have not directed those arguments against neutrality itself. Rather, they have argued that the Court has adopted the wrong sort of neutrality principle. Instead of purposive neutrality, they call for substantive neutrality. That approach would closely scrutinize not only laws or policies that discriminate purposefully, but also those that have the incidental effect of disadvantaging religion.This Article points out a difficulty with the critics' proposal that it calls the problem of symmetry. In order to qualify as neutral, substantive neutrality must apply in the same way to laws that benefit religion as to laws that burden it. Neutralists could not apply strict substantive neutrality to laws that burden religion, but only the more permissive purposive neutrality to laws that benefit religion. That regime would not be neutral. It would systematically advantage religion in violation of evenhandedness.Some of the leading academic critics recognize that substantive neutrality must resist laws that favor religion as well as those that disfavor it. But many of their practical proposals seem to violate the symmetry constraint. Accommodations of religion, in particular, often have the effect of advantaging religious practices over comparable secular activities. For instance, the critics must strongly support the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which applies strict scrutiny (as a statutory matter) to prison regulations that incidentally but substantially burden religious observance among inmates. The Supreme Court recently upheld that law even though it has the effect of advantaging sacred practices over analogous secular ones. The critics surely must applaud that result. Yet advantaging religious over secular practices is difficult to square with substantive neutrality.Liberty, in contrast to neutrality, is asymmetrical. It protects religious freedom regardless of whether doing so incidentally advantages observance over comparable secular practices. This Article argues that a liberty component is necessary to vindicate the critics' own normative intuitions concerning the proper role of religious freedom in American democracy.

Questions on the role of biofilms for the adaptation of microorganisms to unfavorable environmental factors by the example of P. aeruginosa

2020 ◽  
Vol 99 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-383
Author(s):  
Vasily N. Afonyushkin ◽  
N. A. Donchenko ◽  
Ju. N. Kozlova ◽  
N. A. Davidova ◽  
V. Yu. Koptev ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Antibiotic Resistance ◽  
Environmental Factors ◽  
Barrier Function ◽  
Infectious Agent ◽  
Antagonistic Activity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Main Function ◽  
Pathogenic Potential ◽  
The Face

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a widely represented species of bacteria possessing of a pathogenic potential. This infectious agent is causing wound infections, fibrotic cystitis, fibrosing pneumonia, bacterial sepsis, etc. The microorganism is highly resistant to antiseptics, disinfectants, immune system responses of the body. The responses of a quorum sense of this kind of bacteria ensure the inclusion of many pathogenicity factors. The analysis of the scientific literature made it possible to formulate four questions concerning the role of biofilms for the adaptation of P. aeruginosa to adverse environmental factors: Is another person appears to be predominantly of a source an etiological agent or the source of P. aeruginosa infection in the environment? Does the formation of biofilms influence on the antibiotic resistance? How the antagonistic activity of microorganisms is realized in biofilm form? What is the main function of biofilms in the functioning of bacteria? A hypothesis has been put forward the effect of biofilms on the increase of antibiotic resistance of bacteria and, in particular, P. aeruginosa to be secondary in charcter. It is more likely a biofilmboth to fulfill the function of storing nutrients and provide topical competition in the face of food scarcity. In connection with the incompatibility of the molecular radii of most antibiotics and pores in biofilm, biofilm is doubtful to be capable of performing a barrier function for protecting against antibiotics. However, with respect to antibodies and immunocompetent cells, the barrier function is beyond doubt. The biofilm is more likely to fulfill the function of storing nutrients and providing topical competition in conditions of scarcity of food resources.

The Modern Aristotle: Michael Polanyi’s Search for Truth against Nihilism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald Hoinski ◽  
Ronald Polansky
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Michael Polanyi ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
The Face ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Theoretical Science

David Hoinski and Ronald Polansky’s “The Modern Aristotle: Michael Polanyi’s Search for Truth against Nihilism” shows how the general tendencies of contemporary philosophy of science disclose a return to the Aristotelian emphasis on both the formation of dispositions to know and the role of the mind in theoretical science. Focusing on a comparison of Michael Polanyi and Aristotle, Hoinski and Polansky investigate to what degree Aristotelian thought retains its purchase on reality in the face of the changes wrought by modern science. Polanyi’s approach relies on several Aristotelian assumptions, including the naturalness of the human desire to know, the institutional and personal basis for the accumulation of knowledge, and the endorsement of realism against objectivism. Hoinski and Polansky emphasize the promise of Polanyi’s neo-Aristotelian framework, which argues that science is won through reflection on reality.

Expansion of borders in the Kurdistan region and local and regional positions

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (11) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Harith Qahtan Abdullah ◽  
Abbas Fadel Atwan
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Kurdistan Region ◽  
War On Terrorism ◽  
National State ◽  
The Face ◽  
In The Beginning

The borders of Kurdistan represent an important point in Kurdish thought. They represent the hope of establishing their national state. The circumstances of the war on terrorism in Iraq and Syria have led to the emergence of what is known as a "propaganda" and the formation of a global front in its struggle. And with the signs of the collapse of the Syrian state and the weakness of the Iraqi state in the face of the "dashing" in the beginning. These circumstances led to the emergence of the role of the Kurdistan region in the confrontation "ISIS" and maintain the administrative border in the three provinces of Kurdistan in addition to the province of Kirkuk. That the circumstances of the war on terrorism created new international conditions on the Middle East arena, which will generate many problems between the Kurdistan region and the central government of Baghdad, as well as other problems between the region, Syria, Turkey and Iran. The war on terrorism has made countries free to fight the opposition groups under the name Terrorism by their classification. The Turkish side is fighting the PKK within the borders of the Kurdistan region, and this war can develop in a post-"warlike" phase. The war in Syria is also contradictory to vision and not resolved to a specific side and Iran's position on developments is encouraging.

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