Democratic Ideals And Reality

"Is geography one, or is it several subjects? More precisely, are physical and political geography two stages of one investigation, or are they separate subjects to be studied by different methods, the one an appendix of geology, the other of history? " --Halford Mackinder in The Scope and Methods of Geography, 1887 The Scope and Methods of Geography was published by Halford Mackinder in 1887 in the "New Monthly Series of the Royal Geographical Society." It was a manifesto for the New Geography, in which he viewed physical geography and human geography as a single discipline. This publication represented the beginning of an illustrious career as an English geographer and academic.

How propaganda undermines democracy and why we need to pay attention Our democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren't problems for us—not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy—particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality—and how it has damaged democracies of the past. Focusing on the shortcomings of liberal democratic states, Stanley provides a historically grounded introduction to democratic political theory as a window into the misuse of democratic vocabulary for propaganda's selfish purposes. He lays out historical examples, such as the restructuring of the US public school system at the turn of the twentieth century, to explore how the language of democracy is sometimes used to mask an undemocratic reality. Drawing from a range of sources, including feminist theory, critical race theory, epistemology, formal semantics, educational theory, and social and cognitive psychology, he explains how the manipulative and hypocritical declaration of flawed beliefs and ideologies arises from and perpetuates inequalities in society, such as the racial injustices that commonly occur in the United States. How Propaganda Works shows that an understanding of propaganda and its mechanisms is essential for the preservation and protection of liberal democracies everywhere.

Democratic Ideals and Reality delves into the world of geopolitics in the immediate aftermath of the Great War but reflects even the tiniest realities of daily life. Halford John Mackinder was unusually prescient in noting the tremendous potential and danger of changing population demographics across the world and within Europe. He notes the new freedom of mankind to engage in large-scale idealism, where previously the capacity to spend time in building an ideology had been solely devoted to scrabbling for the means of survival. From the modern perspective it is easy to see Mackinder's anxiety about large populations across Europe, engaged in politics but without the education the author considered necessary for prudent decision making. With palpable unease this work recalls young men campaigning to cement self-rule in Ireland, the rapid growth of cities and the laissez-faire attitude of centralised modern nation states to this enormous era of social and industrial development. In thinking about the effects and origins of these social changes Mackinder does not flinch from reflecting in depth on the inner workings of British society. In an age of fragmented communities it is fascinating to see Mackinder's early misgivings about urban workers, atomised and disconnected and an elevated set of elites who detach themselves from their local communities and as a result create a fractured society. Each reader must face up to the author's questions about the direction of his world and determine for themselves whether society has confirmed his fears in the years since this work. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.