Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen

Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen


Latest Episodes

Recreating a Democratic Economy: Our Founders Vision
August 01, 2019

If America’s founders saw where we are today,thy might have thought King George won the war. Instead of democratic control over the common good, a government of by and for the people, today it’s an 18th century style oligarchy. In

“Go Home” Rhetoric is as American as Immigration Itself
July 25, 2019

It’s a long and oscillating history: America welcoming immigrants and telling them to go home. As Washington Post senior editor Marc Fisher explains, it didn’t start with Trump: “there’s a long history of rejecting “different” Americans:” Eastern Europ...

Are Most Americans Unpatriotic?
July 23, 2019

If we criticize Trump, we don’t love America. If we learn history, we are disloyal. You know that’s what a lot of people on the right (in larger numbers than we’d imagined) are claiming. But what is Patriotism? Does the

Erasing Unsettling Truth: The San Francisco Mural Controversy
July 18, 2019

Safe comfortable myth is so soothing, but art, by its nature, is often about challenging the viewer. You may have heard of the controversy about large Depression-era murals on the walls of San Francisco’s George Washington High School. After 80

The Brave Freedom of Satire: Mad Magazine’s Crucial Legacy
July 16, 2019

Gleefully ferreting out deception and laughing at it. An overall spirit of irreverence arising out of the rigid white-bread conformity of the 1950s, Mad Magazine has published its last all-new edition. Today we talk with national affairs correspondent ...

Supreme Court Whittles Away Democracy
July 09, 2019

President Reagan’s former solicitor general and Harvard law professor Charles Fried calls it a “Day of Sorrow for American Democracy:” the day the US Supreme Court issued its 5 to 4 decision abandoning protection of one person one vote. In

Reactions from Iran and Honduras: What Do You Expect?
July 02, 2019

Of course Iran shot down a US spy drone. Any country would do the same. And Trump’s intention for greater tension is achieved. On this segment, legal scholar Marjorie Cohn argues that Iran had a legal right to shoot down

Making The Democratic Party Democratic
June 27, 2019

We’ve all seen it in recent years: the leadership of the DNC and the DCCC dictating policy and acceptable “centrist” positions for their chosen candidates. And how well has that worked out? Toward correcting that hierarchy’s grip on the party

21st Century Tech Trusts: 1984 on Steroids
June 25, 2019

With much of state and federal government in their pockets, the interface between the tech trusts and the infrastructure enables concentration and nearly unimaginable control by the tech giants. As a result they are able to over-charge customers betwee...

Nixon Could Have Used a Mitch McConnell
June 18, 2019

(Please note: this is a corrected audio version) The force behind Trump, the real power in the Republican led senate is Mitch McConnell, who calls himself the grim reaper for killing good bills. Our guest in this discussion, Michael Winship,