Marginal Christianity

Traditional political and economic models have been challenged by their inability to predict the financial crisis and their failure to bring about a return to prosperity. In an interview with EUROPP’s Managing Editor Stuart Brown,  Phillip Blond   discusses the collapse of left-wing and right-wing ideologies, the new majorities that may take their place, and why despite the EU’s failings, becoming the leading power in Europe still offers Britain its best route to leading events on the world stage. You’ve previously stated that the financial crisis has illustrated the bankruptcy of left-wing and right-wing political ideologies. Why have traditional ideologies failed? I think it’s very clear that we’re looking at a complete collapse of standard left and right ideologies across many countries in Europe. We’re in a situation where the left, in order to achieve its end – chiefly greater equity and a stake for the poor in society – only has the state as its means of delivery. B...

By Andrew Sullivan That’s what’s scariest about Donald Trump. Democracies end when they are too democratic. And right now, America is a breeding ground for tyranny. As this dystopian election campaign has unfolded, my mind keeps being tugged by a passage in Plato’s  Republic . It has unsettled — even surprised — me from the moment I first read it in graduate school. The passage is from the part of the dialogue where Socrates and his friends are talking about the nature of different political systems, how they change over time, and how one can slowly evolve into another. And Socrates seemed pretty clear on one sobering point: that “tyranny is probably established out of no other regime than democracy.” What did Plato mean by that? Democracy, for him, I discovered, was a political system of maximal freedom and equality, where every lifestyle is allowed and public offices are filled by a lottery. And the longer a democracy lasted, Plato argued, the...