In the United States, July is when we celebrate the birth of American citizenship—specifically, the thirteen original colonies freeing themselves from British imperial rule to become independent democratic states. So this month, let's take a deep dive into the archive to explore the ideals of freedom, democracy, and our system of government.

At the end of last year and ahead of this fall's momentous presidential election, Josh and Ray contemplated a number of "American Futures"—authoritarian rule, a national divorce, civil war, or just maybe brighter days ahead—inspired by Ken Taylor's unfinished book, Farewell to the Republic We Once Dreamt Of. A year earlier they stepped back to reflect on the very nature of liberal democratic states with Uday Singh Mehta from the CUNY Graduate Center, author of Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought.

Although “one person, one vote” is—at least in principle—a core feature of our liberal democracy, elections are often highly contentious. To think about how elections could be more fair, Josh and Ray ran the numbers with Moon Duchin from Tufts University, Director of the Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Research Group. 

Democracy can be undermined in even more subtle yet pervasive ways when citizens no longer agree on the most basic, easily verifiable facts. Host emeritus John Perry returned to join Ray in examining the role of disinformation in our democracy with attorney and political analyst Dean Johnson.

It is a fact, of course, that our democracy comprises all sorts of non-citizens from all sorts of places. But should cultural or ethnic identity ever be a factor in who gets to immigrate? In 2019 Josh and Ken questioned the nature of multiculturalism with Sarah Song from the UC Berkeley School of Law, author of Immigration and Democracy.