Gregory Foster is a decorated Vietnam vet who teaches at National Defense University. He is dedicated to an efficient and effective defense of our country and argues what we most need to achieve that end is a demilitarization of the

How significant a change in policy toward Latin America does Obama’s trip to Havana mean? As Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy research explains, while the opening to Cuba is beneficial, it seems the American tradition

Between 1945 and the Reagan era, Americans understood that work benefited all and when productivity when up, all stakeholders shared in the rewards. Of course that all changed. But in his new book “Shaping the Future of Work: What Future

He’s a mirror of our culture, the question is: will America look in the mirror? Guest on this show is Erin Aubry Kaplan, author of the new book “I (heart) Obama,” and a long time writer about the black experience

http://media.blubrry.com/keeping_democracy_alive/dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48358971/Brexit.mp3The European Union was supposed to mean a continent of nations united by democratic ideals. Instead power and decision making has become more concentrated and centralized. First it was Greece, then Spain threatening to pull out of the EU, now

Throughout American history there have been times, rare moments in which the political establishment’s movers and shakers quiver as their best laid plans have gone awry. Their too-often successful efforts to keep citizens believing that we are powerless are on

The 2016 New Hampshire Presidential Primary is history. No one predicted a 22 point blowout for Bernie Sanders. The establishment of both parties was flattened by the results. What the heck happened? Media talent trainer and consultant John Kosinski puts

The myth of the rugged individualist settling the west is just that: a myth. The work needed to tame the wild and vast open spaces was not done with a lasso. The white people who populated the massive west needed

He’s a leading contender, surging in the polls but the Democratic Party is wielding a real war on Bernie Sanders. According to Princeton history professor Matt Karp, it’s without precedent. Bernie Sanders is clearly carrying on FDR and LBJ Democratic

When Americans hear the word socialism, they feel frightened. Bernie Sanders has looked to the nations of Scandinavia for models, while Hillary Clinton runs away from that. What is reality? On this show, Ann Jones (author of Kabul in Winter

Of course our democratic system of government comes from Italy. So do chocolate, cigars, and hammocks. Instead of simple brute force, the Italian style of empire building relied on commerce and culture. Guest Christopher Kelly (Italian by marriage) talks about

Work hard, do well at school, play by the rules and you’ll do OK. That does not seem to apply to the more than 2 million young Americans whose parents may have fallen through the large cracks in our broken

No question, FDR was our greatest Democratic president. Though we have, at least for the moment, gone beyond the recession of 2008, perhaps we’ve merely swept the problem under the rug, along with opportunities for real economic security. On this

In the Christmas Truce at the beginning of what was then The Great War, and other lesser know fraternizing between “enemies,” it took courage to question the madness. Still today, Christmas is the one day of peace, while we feel

The ice princess, the black widow. Since the circus of a trial on 1990, Pam Smart has remained in jail with a sentence worse than for Charles Manson. It was a made-for-the-movies spectacle in which the judge said he wanted

When the combined power of the Troika–European Central Bank, European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund–puts the squeeze of austerity on places like Spain and Portugal, a lot of people feel severe economic pain. But in the Iberian countries, they

Chuck Collins, founder of Wealth for the Common Good and senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies talks about the new report on the top .01 percent and the impact on our democracy. They are not job creators as

Of course President Roosevelt knew the Japanese would do something, their oil had been cut off, yet we can conclude he did not know about the specific attack. What no one expected was the transformation of America from a nation

Is there a worse crime than child abuse? Is the complicity by knowing adults just as bad? Is there something about the very nature of authoritarianism in schools? Guest on this show lived through an atmosphere of abuse in a

For decades police have gotten away with murder. Thanks to cell phones, today they’re getting caught. And they are fighting back, actually threatening such people as Quentin Tarantino. On the first half, guest Travis Morales of Rise Up October and

Of course America is a mosaic of cultures, and all citizens are equally American. But since 9/11, South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Americans have been routinely harassed and often bullied and terrorized, often by actual government policies. People are

In their chilling and intense new novel Broken! , authors Michael Kearns (who taught “enhanced interrogation”) and Ronald Solomon, former TV producer and creator, paint a vivid picture of a world only slightly different from today, filled with swarms of

While the left has had very few actual electoral victories, author Michael Kazin argues it has very effectively changed the nation. The author of “A Godly Hero: William Jennings Bryan,” talks about his new book “American Dreamers.” What’s gone right

Perpetual war is now widely accepted. Henry Kissinger’s unique apparently amoral approach to assertion of his and America’s power still casts a shadow on America, both domestically and across the world. This new book: Kissinger’s Shadow, The Long Reach of

You may have thought our schools, at least the better ones, successfully tackled the problem of institutional racism. But in this surprising new study, well-established assumptions based on style of clothes, culture, and, really, skin color serve to keep down

There are a lot of similarities and differences: They are both men over 65 but England’s Jeremy Corbyn is a traditional Labourite leftist while Bernie Sanders is an all-American left-leaning Democratic populist. But both campaigns earned their descriptions as political

The Tea Party these days looks with fondness to the 19th century as a time of rugged individualism and unemcumbered free markets. As with so many mythic images, reality is exceedingly different. Like corporate personhood? Thank the railroads. Ever notice

American Exceptionalism: it’s beyond mere national pride, it is an insistence that we are above the normal rules and that we are God’s gift to the world. Of course if we know someone who feels this way about him or

Started under Reagan in 1983, the drive to put public education in the hands of for-profit interests has greatly weakened education, done real harm to thousands of kids, and weakened our real national security. Today’s guest is John Kuhn who

We’re all familiar with 1776. But before the actual separation from England, there was revolution across the land. The spirit of 1774 was focused on class-blind democracy and a lot of what happened then, with powerful actions from the grassroots