Posts Taggeddemocracy

The people of Manchester break lockdown to join the global Black Lives Matter protests.

In 2013, political scientist Erica Chenoweth proposed the 3.5% rule, which argued that according to historical data from 1900 to 2006, whenever nonviolent protests against an authoritarian regime reached the tipping point of 3.5% of a country’s population, that government was almost always certain to fall. There was something about that number that created a tipping point that would go on to engulf the entire country and eventually cause regime change.

“I’m not political.” This is something you often hear people say these days. If asked, they will admit that they don’t regularly watch the news or read the paper. They’re not closely following policy debates or the inner workings of government. They don’t follow media elites, read in-depth articles, or listen to podcasts on subjects considered political. Most people are simply not paying that close attention.

No one ever accused John Wayne of being an intellectual. From Daniel Boone and Wyatt Earp to Huey Long and George Wallace, there has always been a strong populist strain woven throughout our national mythology. Forget for a moment that any list of great Americans, from Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Frederick Douglass, contained a multitude of brilliant intellectuals.