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Articles by Scott Casleton
I Don't Have to Forgive Joe Biden
Flickr: Marc Nozell We should condemn the president-elect’s record on race, but that does not foreclose hope for his administration. I received my first lesson in political philosophy from my father, who passed away this September. Though he never graduated high school, he earned his graduate degree by growing up a deeply chocolate Puerto Rican man in the 1960s and ’70s.
Burdens and Benefits
Image: flickr / Jordan Uhl A recent abortion ruling asks whether abortion access laws may one day be judged on how they serve women's health. Last week, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in June Medical Services v. Russo, a highly anticipated case that tested the constitutional protection of abortion rights. The outcome, striking down Louisiana’s Unsafe Abortion Protection Act, surprised those on both sides of the abortion divide.
The Problem Isn't Just Police-It's Politics
President Trump speaks to law enforcement on July 28, 2017. Image: The White House In this interview, sociologist Alex Vitale explains how the policing crisis in the United States begins with politics—the decision to embrace neoliberal austerity and to turn the social problems it creates over to police. On May 25 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, George Floyd lay handcuffed and face down for almost nine minutes while police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on the back of his neck and head.
The Problem Isn't Just Police—It's Politics - Boston Review
On May 25 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, George Floyd lay handcuffed and face down for almost nine minutes while police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on the back of his neck and head. Floyd repeatedly said that he could not breathe. But Chauvin did not relent, and Floyd died of asphyxiation. Floyd’s murder, captured clearly on video, has led to weeks of protest both at home and abroad.
Technocracy After COVID-19
Left to right: Christine Lagarde, Kristalina Georgieva, and Mario Draghi Crisis management only blurs ever more the boundary between politics and technical expertise. “COVID-19 represents a new form of economic shock that cannot be tackled using the textbooks of the past.” So recently observed Christine Lagarde, head of the European Central Bank (ECB). That emergencies throw orthodoxies in the air seems clear; fresh problems demand fresh thinking.
Bernie Beats Trump (and Biden) on Trade
It is an indisputable fact that over the last few decades American workers have seen their wages stagnate and jobs disappear. Unfortunately, they have found little relief in the policies of either the Democratic or Republican parties. Quite the contrary, at least since Bill Clinton's promotion of the North American Free Trade Agreement (known as NAFTA) in 1994, American policy makers have been doing much to hurt and little to help the ailing American working class.
College Behind Bars
Image: Tapui / Adobe One man’s struggle to earn a degree while incarcerated shows how far tough-on-crime policies go to prevent prisoners from having a second chance. At 3:00 a.m. on October 2, 2003, while my University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee classmates rested for the next day of their sophomore year, I was on my way to prison, sentenced to seventeen years for shooting a fellow teen who had robbed me in a drug deal.
Going Negative
At the Supreme Court, majority rules. Yet dissents have drastically changed the institution—and the country. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’s dissents changed the course of free-speech law. / Library of Congress Dissent and the Supreme Court: Its Role in the Court’s History and the Nation’s Constitutional Dialogue Melvin I.
The Responsibility of Intellectuals, Redux
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Citizenship in Emergency
Oct 1, 2002 49 Min read time Image: Flickr Can democracy protect us against terrorism? For the past year, we have spoken unceasingly about the events of September 11, 2001. But one aspect of that day has not yet been the topic of open discussion: the difficulty we had as a country defending ourselves; as it happened, the only successful defense that day was carried out by the passengers on Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania.
State of the Nation: Court of Public Opinion
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State of the Nation: The Media and Other Matters
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State of the Nation: Voters and Parties
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State of the Nation: Tax and Spend
While we have you... ...we need your help. You might have noticed the absence of paywalls at Boston Review. We are committed to staying free for all our readers. Now we are going one step further to become completely ad-free. This means you will always be able to read us without roadblocks or barriers to entry. It also means that we count on you, our readers, for support. If you like what you read here, help us keep it free for everyone by making a donation. No amount is too small.
As American as Trump
European analogies abound, but the GOP frontrunner is homegrown. Donald Drumpf, The Pfannkuchen Fuhrer / Dan Lacey In an unusual twist, the U.S. media are looking to Europe in order to explain the political rise of Donald Trump. Given the typically parochial nature of American public debate, we might celebrate this. But while there is much to learn from contemporary European developments, this framing obscures at least as much as it illuminates.
The State of Boston
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How Knowledge are Americans About the Supreme Court?
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Remembering Randall Forsberg
The originator of the idea of a “nuclear freeze.” Randall Forsberg, a nuclear disarmament advocate and an important player in debates about U.S. defense policy during the Cold War, passed away on October 19, 2007, at age sixty-four. As founder of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, she was widely credited with originating the idea of a “nuclear freeze,” an immediate moratorium on nuclear weapons production beginning in 1980.
Eliminating the Danger
What can we do to prevent a nuclear catastrophe? Nuclear arms control has recently suffered serious setbacks. The suspended START negotiations between the United States and Russia, the Senate’s rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), United States plans to withdraw from the ABM treaty, nuclear weapon tests by India and Pakistan, and a planned new submarine program in China—all these threaten to undermine important strides made in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Democracy's Dilemma — Final Response
Our current information ecosystem is simply not well suited to democracy. Editors’ Note: This forum is part of Boston Review's special project Democracy's Promise. In our lead essay, we argued that Democracy’s Dilemma is that the information flows that democracy relies on can also be weaponized against it. This means that we need to start to understand democracy as an information system to be defended, analyzing its attack surfaces and modeling the threats against it.
We Are All Khaled Said
Image: Hossam el-Hamalawy An Interview with the Administrators of the Facebook Page that Fueled the Egyptian Revolution. Editors’ note: On June 6, 2010 a 28-year-old Egyptian named Khaled Mohamed Said was beaten to death by Egyptian police while in custody. Four days later the “We are all Khaled Said” Facebook campaign was launched, fueling a public outcry that eventually led to the overthrow of the Mubarak regime.
Choosing Hope
Noam Chomsky and Scott Casleton discuss socialism, anarchism, and the fight for progress in U.S. politics today. There is always the temptation to think of one’s own era of politics as decisive, a turning point in history. The best way to check this impulse is to seek the perspective of activists who understand how the past has produced the present.
Choosing Hope - Boston Review
There is always the temptation to think of one’s own era of politics as decisive, a turning point in history. The best way to check this impulse is to seek the perspective of activists who understand how the past has produced the present. Noam Chomsky has been an incisive voice in the American political discourse for over six decades, writing widely on U.S. foreign policy, the news media, and neoliberalism.
Islam's Abortion Debate
Islamic jurisprudence does not encourage abortion, but unlike the Catholic Church, it does not absolutely forbid it. Inna Hudaya, founder of Samsara, an information center on abortion in Indonesia. Neighbors think it is some sort of youth activities center. The unmarked modest farmhouse surrounded by lush rice paddies sits in relative isolation along a straight and narrow lane on the outskirts of this Javanese city famed as a center of learning. A sinewy young man guards the entrance.
Two-State Head, One-State Heart
Image: flickr / Alisdare Hickson For a two-state solution to succeed, Israeli Jews must first forswear their righteous narrative of moral superiority. Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor Yossi Klein Halevi HarperCollins, $24.99 (cloth) After decades of violence and diplomatic failure, even holding meaningful conversations across the Israeli-Palestinian divide has become a challenge.
Forget "Trump Country." Rural Socialism Exists.
Image: Mother Jones rallying the coal miners in Eskdale, West Virginia. WikiMedia. It's time to rewrite the narrative of “Trump Country.” Rural places weren't always red, and many are turning increasingly blue. This essay is featured in Boston Review’s Winter 2019 issue Left Elsewhere. When my grandfather was a child, his stepfather would bring him along as he sold moonshine to poor working men in southwestern Virginia coal country.
For Labour, Victory Next Time
Were Labour's gains in the recent British election overblown, or is there real cause for hope? Editor's Note: This essay concludes a three-part series covering the 2017 British election and its aftermath. You can read the preceding essays here and here. The results of the British General Election of 2017 have been received on the British left as a moment of exquisite promise, carrying a firm hope that a fundamental transformation in the politics of the country is underway.
The Devolution of the Modern President
Trump may be egregious, but he is also a symptom of a much bigger problem facing modern presidents: the inability to govern. To say there has never been a presidency like the presidency of Donald Trump is to state the obvious. We have had obnoxious presidents before (Andrew Johnson was especially combative and insulting). We have had presidents who cheated on their wives (Warren G. Harding, John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and who knows how many others).
Trumpism Before Trump
We can’t fully appreciate the current anti-immigration moment without understanding the decades-long investment by right-wing movement politics. A month ago the Trump administration announced it would start separating families detained at the U.S.–Mexico border in its effort to deter unauthorized border-crossings. The policy, which has torn young migrant children from the arms of their distraught parents, has supercharged the immigration debate around the country.
Citizens United is not to blame for the money-in-politics problem
Outside contributors' opinions and analysis of the most important issues in politics, science, and culture. From the moment the 2010 Supreme Court ruling Citizens United v. FEC came down, it scandalized liberals. The decision heralded the “hostile corporate takeover of our democratic process,” Congress member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) thundered at the time.
Bloody Gina
Last month President Donald Trump signaled another shuffling of key posts: Rex Tillerson was shown the door, CIA boss Mike Pompeo was offered the position of Secretary of State, and the CIA’s second-in-command, Gina Haspel, was proposed to lead the agency. Haspel has subsequently been in the media limelight, and this week will be further scrutinized during her Senate confirmation process, during which senators are sure to question her record on torture and extralegal detention.
Citizens United is not to blame for the money-in-politics problem
From the moment the 2010 Supreme Court ruling Citizens United v. FEC came down, it scandalized liberals. The decision heralded the “hostile corporate takeover of our democratic process,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) thundered at the time.
Testing the Waters in Texas
Image: atmtx Whoever figures out how to save Texas might just save the rest of us in the process. God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State Lawrence Wright Knopf, $27.95 (cloth) A Thirsty Land: The Making of an American Water Crisis Seamus McGraw University of Texas Press, $27.95 (cloth) The future of the United States looks a lot like today’s Texas, or so suggest two recent, unflinching books about the perils and promise of the nation’s most controversial state.
Reviving the Black Radical Tradition
To dismiss human rights is to ignore black liberation struggles. This forum is featured in Race Capitalism Justice, now available in reprint. Order your copy today. Walter Johnson is upset at the state of the historiography of slavery and rightly challenges uncritical talk of “dehumanization.” In its most extreme iteration, a few have even likened enslavement to the domestication of animals. This logic would carry us all the way back to Aristotle, who described slaves as talking tools.
Two Cheers for Polarization
Image: Karl-Ludwig Poggemann We may not like it, but when it comes to U.S. politics, polarization may very well be part of the solution. At a campaign event for a Democratic candidate in October, Joe Biden embarked down a classically Bidenesque aside.
No Eulogy for the Living
Image: Polyrus An open letter from a Filipino writer to his fellow citizens. We cannot turn away. When something bleeds, you watch it carefully. This last year doctors found in my brainstem a cerebral cavernous malformation: an inaccessible, blackberry-shaped lesion of leak-prone capillaries that tend to bleed and expand places where there’s no space for expansion. Turns out those who dislike me were right: I have a hole in my head.
The “Members Only” President
Image: Steve Jurvetson Trump's paternalistic language of care draws an exceptional circle around whites only. Police officers are required to guard the heads of people they arrest as they load them into the back seat of a police car, lest they bump their heads. The current president told a gathering of police this summer that they should reconsider this gesture.
The Conservative Con That Gave Us Trumpcare
Image: Wikimedia Commons The American Health Care Act has a long history that returns us to the New Deal and its critics. On June 16, 2017, The Washington Post published an op-ed in favor of the American Health Care Act (AHCA) by Michael A. Needham, CEO of Heritage Action America, the lobbying arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Hamilton's Choice
Image: Steve Jurvetson Hamilton presents us with the Choice of Hercules retold as a choice between two kinds of political life. The ancient Greek and Roman Stoics told prospective pupils a story about the hero Hercules. Arriving at a fork in the road, the young hero is approached by two goddesses. One is beautiful and tempting; she promises happiness and worldly renown.
Anatomy of a Civil War
On April 7, 2006, the third anniversary of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, I drove south with Shia pilgrims from Baghdad to the shrine city of Najaf. The day before, on the same route, a minibus like ours had taken machine-gun fire in the Sunni town of Iskandariyah. Five pilgrims were killed.
The Drifters
Why the Supreme Court Makes Justices More Liberal. When Justices William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O’Connor left the bench last year, conservatives were in an anxious mood: though pleased at the prospect of shifting the Supreme Court to the right, they were worried by the record of past Republican appointments. The refrain in conservative commentary, repeated with special intensity during the Harriet Miers affair, was: Not another Souter. Not another Kennedy. Not another O’Connor.
The Logic of Effective Altruism
A minimally acceptable ethical life involves using a substantial part of one’s spare resources to make the world a better place. Photo: Adam Cohn I met Matt Wage in 2009 when he took my Practical Ethics class at Princeton University. In the readings relating to global poverty and what we ought to be doing about it, he found an estimate of how much it costs to save the life of one of the millions of children who die each year from diseases that we can prevent or cure.
How Markets Crowd Out Morals
Not only are there some things money can’t buy, but there are also many things money shouldn’t buy. We live in a time when almost anything can be bought and sold. Markets have come to govern our lives as never before. But are there some things that money should not be able to buy? Most people would say yes. Consider friendship. Suppose you want more friends than you have. Would you try to buy some? Not likely. A moment’s reflection would lead you to realize that it wouldn’t work.
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