John Peeler: The fundamental problem, as with so much of Trump’s foreign policy, is incoherence: the pieces not only don’t fit together, they work against each other.
John Peeler
John Peeler is a retired professor of political science at Bucknell University, specializing in Latin American and international affairs. After growing up in Florida and Georgia, he moved north as a teenager, and began a lifelong leftward migration. He’s been writing primarily for LA Progressive since 2008. He continues to live in central Pennsylvania.
Health Care: Common Decency, Common Sense
John Peeler: No matter how elegantly simple the initial proposal, the final result will be complex, ugly, and maybe worse than what we have now.
The Shackled Leviathan and the Fate of Liberty
John Peeler: The Shackled Leviathan (they ought to be giving John Locke some credit here) occupies what they call “the Narrow Corridor” between the Absent Leviathan and the Despotic Leviathan.
Why Trump Should Be Removed
John Peeler: He should be impeached because he’s violated the law to protect himself and taken actions that endanger the security and integrity of our democratic system.
The Afghanistan Papers: Lessons Learned
John Peeler: We usually have lacked the necessary deep understanding of the countries we’re invading, and we have usually lacked the staying power to really transform the country whose behavior we find deplorable.
Trump’s Trap: How to Get Out
John Peeler: If they don’t impeach, he will have cemented the precedents for further unchecked abuses of power. By doing their constitutional duty as they see it, House Democrats have fallen into Trump’s trap.
Universal Solvent: Trump the Anti-Conservative
John Peeler: Whatever structure obstructs him, he will undermine it. Whoever has independent authority, he will destroy. If he stays in power, there will be no power but his.
Political Addiction and Creative Destruction: Dilemmas of Radical Reform
John Peeler: Any serious reform plan, whether for health care or green energy, must think through how these workers are to be helped. I think Warren and Bernie Sanders do fairly well in thinking through this challenge.
Exhuming Aristotle
John Peeler: Foweraker seeks to exhume Aristotle’s concept to make sense of some stubborn realities of democracy in Latin America and elsewhere in the world.
Climbing Out of the Swamp: What to Do About Trump’s Misdeeds
John Peeler: it is also clear that the testimony to date has not moved a single Republican representative or senator to announce support for impeachment of the president, nor has it significantly moved national public opinion on this matter , which remains closely divided.
Cut to the Chase: Fundamentals of Trump and Ukraine
John Peeler: Putin seems to have planted the idea with Trump that Ukraine is a bad place. Hence Trump’s negative predisposition toward a place he probably couldn’t even find on a map.
The Rise and Fall of Evo Morales: Implications for Democracy
John Peeler: Morales saw that his position was untenable. So he resigned. Perhaps he lives to fight another day. He still has much of his original popular base, the indigenous majority of the country. Out of power, out of the country, he will still be able to render the country ungovernable without him.
God Made Me Do It: The New Religious Freedom
John Peeler: What’s novel about this new approach by religious conservatives is that it seeks to justify their refusal to recognize rights to which they object.
