A new generation of Americans has declared that another world is possible. And yet, the stubborn problems of inequality, climate change, and declining health seem as intractable as ever. Where might different answers lie?
Intrepid journalist Natasha Hakimi Zapata has traveled around the world, from Costa Rica to Uganda, and Estonia to Singapore, uncovering how different countries solve the problems that plague the United States. Through in-depth reporting, including interviews with senior government officials, activists, industry professionals, and the ordinary people affected by their policies, Another World Is Possible examines innovative programs that address public health, social services, climate change, housing, education, addiction, and more.
In each instance Hakimi Zapata provides a clear-eyed assessment of the history, challenges, cost-effectiveness, and real-world impact of these programs. The result is a compelling, frame-shifting account of how we might live differently and create a safer, healthier, more sustainable future.
A work of keen analysis as well as enormous heart and optimism, Another World Is Possible is destined to crack the mold of current debates, and to refresh our sense of what might be possible tomorrow.
One of the most misunderstood -- and misrepresented -- elements of the Catholic Church is her social teaching. It is all too often misconstrued and even held hostage by speculative economic theories and partisan politics. When G. K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, and their colleagues endeavored to promote the ideas of property ownership and independence one hundred years ago, it was frequently misinterpreted due to the terminology used. Here, at last, is a clear explanation of authentic Catholic social teaching, with balanced and practical applications that incorporate morality, justice, and freedom.
This outstanding collection features contributions from some of the finest thinkers in Christianity today, who illustrate the transformative impact of centralization in politics, history, literature, and culture and offer real-life accounts about the success of localism in America and beyond. You will learn:
The authors show how solutions tend to originate with the family and involve taking an active role in what most directly affects the family, whether in commerce, government, or education. They explain how to develop a truly localist economy -- and why you should -- and they emphasize the indispensable role of fathers in this crucial task. They also spell out why building a local community is key to preserving faith, heritage, creativity, beauty, and rational politics. Additionally, the authors propose wise methods for strengthening marriages and educating children in modernity.
Other topics include suggestions on how to live cooperatively, develop a more agrarian lifestyle for your family, ease into homesteading, and cultivate an environmental ethic compatible with the faith. You will also find practical ways to revitalize your church and foster a healthier way of life for future generations. Whether you are a Christian or not, this book will open your eyes to what's wrong with the world and give you powerful ideas for making it a better place.
David Stroh has produced an elegant and cogent guide to what works. Research with early learners is showing that children are natural systems thinkers. This book will help to resuscitate these intuitive capabilities and strengthen them in the fire of facing our toughest problems.--Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline
Concrete guidance on how to incorporate systems thinking in problem solving, decision making, and strategic planning--for everyone!
Donors, leaders of nonprofits, and public policy makers usually have the best of intentions to serve society and improve social conditions. But often their solutions fall far short of what they want to accomplish and what is truly needed. Moreover, the answers they propose and fund often produce the opposite of what they want over time. We end up with temporary shelters that increase homelessness, drug busts that increase drug-related crime, or food aid that increases starvation.
How do these unintended consequences come about and how can we avoid them? By applying conventional thinking to complex social problems, we often perpetuate the very problems we try so hard to solve, but it is possible to think differently, and get different results.
Systems Thinking for Social Change enables readers to contribute more effectively to society by helping them understand what systems thinking is and why it is so important in their work. It also gives concrete guidance on how to incorporate systems thinking in problem solving, decision making, and strategic planning without becoming a technical expert.
Systems thinking leader David Stroh walks readers through techniques he has used to help people improve their efforts on complex problems like:
The result is a highly readable, effective guide to understanding systems and using that knowledge to get the results you want.
In The Vision of the Anointed, Thomas Sowell presents a devastating critique of the mind-set behind the failed social policies of the past thirty years. Sowell sees what has happened during that time not as a series of isolated mistakes but as a logical consequence of a tainted vision whose defects have led to crises in education, crime, and family dynamics, and to other social pathologies. In this book, he describes how elites-the anointed-have replaced facts and rational thinking with rhetorical assertions, thereby altering the course of our social policy.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
President Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has written a revolutionary road map to saving our children from leftist indoctrination.
Behind a smokescreen of preparing students for the new industrial economy, early progressives had political control in mind. America's original schools didn't just make kids memorize facts or learn skills; they taught them to think freely and arrive at wisdom. They assigned the classics, inspired love of God and country, and raised future citizens that changed the world forever.
Today, after 16,000 hours of K-12 indoctrination, our kids come out of government schools hating America. They roll their eyes at religion and disdain our history. We spend more money on education than ever, but kids can barely read and write--let alone reason with discernment. Western culture is on the ropes. Kids are bored and aimless, flailing for purpose in a system that says racial and gender identity is everything.
Battle for the American Mind is the untold story of the Progressive plan to neutralize the basis of our Republic - by removing the one ingredient that had sustained Western Civilization for thousands of years. Pete Hegseth and David Goodwin explain why, no matter what political skirmishes conservatives win, progressives are winning the war--and control the supply lines of future citizens. Reversing this reality will require parents to radically reorient their children's education; even most homeschooling and Christian schooling are infused with progressive assumptions. We need to recover a lost philosophy of education - grounded in virtue and excellence - that can arm future generations to fight for freedom. It's called classical Christian education. Never heard of it? You're not alone.
Battle for the American Mind is more than a book; it's a field guide for remaking school in the United States. We've ceded our kids' minds to the left for far too long--this book gives patriotic parents the ammunition to join an insurgency that gives America a fighting chance.
Whether you're a conservative looking to push back against the progressive agenda or simply someone who cares about the education of our children, this book is for you.
Written during the English Civil War (1642-1651), Leviathan argues for a social contract and rule by an absolute sovereign. Hobbes wrote that civil war and the brute situation of a state of nature (the war of all against all) could only be avoided by strong, undivided government.
After lengthy discussion with Thomas Hobbes, the Parisian Abraham Bosse created the etching for the book's famous frontispiece in the g ometrique style which Bosse himself had refined. It is similar in organisation to the frontispiece of Hobbes' De Cive (1642), created by Jean Matheus. The frontispiece has two main elements, of which the upper part is by far the more striking.
In it, a giant crowned figure is seen emerging from the landscape, clutching a sword and a crosier, beneath a quote from the Book of Job--Non est potestas Super Terram quae Comparetur ei. Iob. 41 . 24 (There is no power on earth to be compared to him. Job 41 . 24)--linking the figure to the monster of that book. (Due to disagreements over the precise location of the chapters and verses when they were divided in the Late Middle Ages, the verse Hobbes quotes is usually given as Job 41:33 in modern Christian translations into English, Job 41:25 in the Masoretic text, Septuagint, and the Luther Bible; it is Iob 41:24 in the Vulgate.) The torso and arms of the figure are composed of over three hundred persons, in the style of Giuseppe Arcimboldo; all are facing inwards with just the giant's head having visible features. (A manuscript of Leviathan created for Charles II in 1651 has notable differences - a different main head but significantly the body is also composed of many faces, all looking outwards from the body and with a range of expressions.)
The lower portion is a triptych, framed in a wooden border. The centre form contains the title on an ornate curtain. The two sides reflect the sword and crosier of the main figure - earthly power on the left and the powers of the church on the right. Each side element reflects the equivalent power - castle to church, crown to mitre, cannon to excommunication, weapons to logic, and the battlefield to the religious courts. The giant holds the symbols of both sides, reflecting the union of secular, and spiritual in the sovereign, but the construction of the torso also makes the figure the state.
How the expansion of primary education in the West emerged not from democratic ideals but from the state's desire to control its citizens
Nearly every country today has universal primary education. But why did governments in the West decide to provide education to all children in the first place? In Raised to Obey, Agustina Paglayan offers an unsettling answer. The introduction of broadly accessible primary education was not mainly a response to industrialization, or fueled by democratic ideals, or even aimed at eradicating illiteracy or improving skills. It was motivated instead by elites' fear of the masses--and the desire to turn the savage, unruly, and morally flawed children of the lower classes into well-behaved future citizens who would obey the state and its laws. Drawing on unparalleled evidence from two centuries of education provision in Europe and the Americas, and deploying rich data that capture the expansion of primary education and its characteristics, this sweeping book offers a political history of primary schools that is both broad and deep. Paglayan shows that governments invested in primary schools when internal threats heightened political elites' anxiety around mass violence and the breakdown of social order. Two hundred years later, the original objective of disciplining children remains at the core of how most public schools around the world operate. The future of education systems--and their ability to reduce poverty and inequality--hinges on our ability to understand and come to terms with this troubling history.An eye-opening expose of the impending transformation of American democracy into a theocratic state. Esme Mees lays bare the calculating plan of the Heritage Foundation to infuse government with radical Christian values and dismantle essential freedoms as outlined in their Project 2025. The Blueprint is a clarion call to action comprised of short summaries of their plans for each government department and explanations for why we cannot trust these unpatriotic actors. Complimented by striking medieval wood print illustrations, and told like a series of chilling fairy tales, Mees' urgent yet eloquent prose and commitment to truth make this a must-read for anyone concerned about the future of democracy and civil liberties. Just be careful reading it before bed because it is a terrifying tale sure to give you nightmares.
Aging and Social Policy in the United States guides students through an exploration of social policies and policymaking that address the needs of older adults and their families. It situates the experiences of older adults in the context of their environment, examining social welfare policies that affect the rights and interests of older adults.
The book begins with an introductory unit, providing a foundation for the book, defining key terms, describing how to analyze the impacts of a policy on a population, and examining the ways in which policy is positioned within societal assumptions. Utilizing the life course perspective, the middle three units of this book situate individual biological and psychological challenges of aging in the context of how they are addressed by individuals, families, and societies, identifying the strengths and challenges of existing and proposed social policies at each of these levels. The concluding unit provides comparative insights as to how aging issues are addressed in a sample of countries around the world.
Aging and Social Policy in the United States provides undergraduate and graduate students with critical knowledge and perspectives on the complexities of addressing the needs of an aging population.