This book assumes that the world is moving inexorably, if in fits and starts, toward union. It explores the implications for all global citizens, and posits that, to succeed, it will be predicated upon a general disarmament and a broad adoption of the principles of Representative Democracy.--
This book assumes that the world is moving inexorably, if in fits and starts, toward union. The author explores the implications such a unification will have for all global citizens, great and small, and considers some of the ways such a union might be managed for the greatest good.As globalization gains speed and as its benefits and also its costs become more apparent, the author sketches out some of the conditions that could, eventually, make for a better life for all. He draws on the tenets of Representative Democracy using the US Constitution as a guide. Second, he posits that for such a union to succeed, all nations will either be representative democracies or will convert to the use of representative democracy within a reasonable time after joining the world union. As a natural consequence of these developments, the author suggests,any nation choosing not to join the world union will find its isolation unsustainable and will seek to join the union after all. Lastly, the author concludes that a meaningful liberal education is necessary to prepare individuals for their role as politically, economically, and socially informed citizens.
Beginning where Volume 1 left off, this book assumes that the world is moving inexorably, if in fits and starts, toward union. The author explores the implications such a unification will have for all global citizens, great and small, and considers some of the ways such a union might be managed for the greatest good. As globalization gains speed and as its benefits and also its costs become more apparent, the author sketches out some of the conditions that could, eventually, make for a better life for all. He draws on the tenets of Representative Democracy using the US Constitution as a guide. Second, he posits that for such a union to succeed, all nations will either be representative democracies or will convert to the use of representative democracy within a reasonable time after joining the world union. As a natural consequence of these developments, the author suggests,any nation choosing not to join the world union will find its isolation unsustainable and will seek to join the union after all. Lastly, the author concludes that a meaningful liberal education is necessary to prepare individuals for their role as politically, economically, and socially informed citizens.
“A novel exploration of societal roles, gender, and equality.” —School Library Journal (starred review) The Outsiders meets Mad Max: Fury Road in this “daring and dramatic” (Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling) dystopian novel about sisterhood and the cruel choices people are forced to make in order to survive. At night, Las Mal Criadas own these streets. Sixteen-year-old Nalah leads the fiercest all-girl crew in Mega City. That role brings with it violent throwdowns and access to the hottest boydega clubs, but Nala quickly grows weary of her questionable lifestyle. Her dream is to get off the streets and make a home in the exclusive Mega Towers, in which only a chosen few get to live. To make it to the Mega Towers, Nalah must prove her loyalty to the city’s benevolent founder and cross the border in a search of the mysterious gang the Ashé Riders. Led by a reluctant guide, Nalah battles crews and her own doubts but the closer she gets to her goal the more she loses sight of everything—and everyone—she cares about. Nalah must choose whether or not she’s willing to do the unspeakable to get what she wants. Can she discover that home is not where you live but whom you chose to protect before she loses the family she’s created for good?
Utopia is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries.
Universal basic income. A 15-hour workweek. Open borders. Does it sound too good to be true? One of Europe's leading young thinkers shows how we can build an ideal world today. "A more politically radical Malcolm Gladwell." -- New York Times After working all day at jobs we often dislike, we buy things we don't need. Rutger Bregman, a Dutch historian, reminds us it needn't be this way -- and in some places it isn't. Rutger Bregman's TED Talk about universal basic income seemed impossibly radical when he delivered it in 2014. A quarter of a million views later, the subject of that video is being seriously considered by leading economists and government leaders the world over. It's just one of the many utopian ideas that Bregman proves is possible today. Utopia for Realists is one of those rare books that takes you by surprise and challenges what you think can happen. From a Canadian city that once completely eradicated poverty, to Richard Nixon's near implementation of a basic income for millions of Americans, Bregman takes us on a journey through history, and beyond the traditional left-right divides, as he champions ideas whose time have come. Every progressive milestone of civilization -- from the end of slavery to the beginning of democracy -- was once considered a utopian fantasy. Bregman's book, both challenging and bracing, demonstrates that new utopian ideas, like the elimination of poverty and the creation of the fifteen-hour workweek, can become a reality in our lifetime. Being unrealistic and unreasonable can in fact make the impossible inevitable, and it is the only way to build the ideal world.
Early in the 21st century the world is enjoying an uneasy peace, with a distinct division between the "straight" society and the various fringe groups that go to form the Byworld. Tension grows, however, over the presence of an alien spaceship that is orbiting the world, bearing a single occupant - the Sigman. It appears that no-one knows how to communicate with the Sigman; no-one knows the purpose of his visit. Until two people - one "straight" and the other a Byworlder - solve the problems involved; and in so doing trigger off a series of violent plots and counterplots that mount to a frenetic climax.
Human rights offer a vision of international justice that today’s idealistic millions hold dear. Yet the very concept on which the movement is based became familiar only a few decades ago when it profoundly reshaped our hopes for an improved humanity. In this pioneering book, Samuel Moyn elevates that extraordinary transformation to center stage and asks what it reveals about the ideal’s troubled present and uncertain future. For some, human rights stretch back to the dawn of Western civilization, the age of the American and French Revolutions, or the post–World War II moment when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was framed. Revisiting these episodes in a dramatic tour of humanity’s moral history, The Last Utopia shows that it was in the decade after 1968 that human rights began to make sense to broad communities of people as the proper cause of justice. Across eastern and western Europe, as well as throughout the United States and Latin America, human rights crystallized in a few short years as social activism and political rhetoric moved it from the hallways of the United Nations to the global forefront. It was on the ruins of earlier political utopias, Moyn argues, that human rights achieved contemporary prominence. The morality of individual rights substituted for the soiled political dreams of revolutionary communism and nationalism as international law became an alternative to popular struggle and bloody violence. But as the ideal of human rights enters into rival political agendas, it requires more vigilance and scrutiny than when it became the watchword of our hopes.
Volume I traces the influence of a generation of internationalists on policy, particularly on Winston Churchill's proposal of Anglo-French union of June 16, 1940, deliberations in the U.S. State Department on the shape of a postwar international security organization until October 1943, the Baruch plan for the international control of atomic energy in l946, and early efforts at UN reform. Volume 2 recounts the history and practical politics of creating a world in which the rule of law maintains the peace in the same way as in well-organized free national states. The coming of the Cold War by 1947 is the principal explanation for the immediate failure of the world federalists. The historic opportunity for so fundamental an innovation in international relations as the establishment of even a limited world federation had passed, but for the next few years there was a vigorous and deep political thinking about the continued prospect of war. Work toward this goal continued, and eventually the United World Federalists built up enough of a popular movement to pass resolutions favoring U.S. participation in 22 states.