Adam Gurri

1 week ago | liberalcurrents.com | Katherine Cross |Adam Gurri |Caitlin Green |Trent Nelson

— 13 min read There was no pretense around the idea of ‘free speech’ in a theocracy like Saudi Arabia, where I grew up. There simply wasn’t any freedom to speak your mind—and no one was trying to make you believe otherwise. Everything was censored: movies, music, cartoons, magazines, books.

3 weeks ago | liberalcurrents.com | Samantha Hancox-Li |Jamelle Bouie |Adam Gurri |Melvin Rogers

Kristi Noem’s staged propaganda video in front of men in the El Salvador prison to which U.S. officials renditioned them has been drawing comparisons to the horrors of Nazi fascism. It’s easy to see why, and, frankly, I agree. The men behind her have had their heads shaved; they stand and sit on multi-decker bunks, looking toward the camera; and they are all there in the absence of due process.

Oct 2, 2024 | liberalcurrents.com | Adam Gurri |Samantha Hancox-Li |Janet Bufton |Paul Crider

We have forgotten feudalism. We think of lords and gentry in the same way we think of knights and castles. Feudalism is little more than a fantastical setting for our imagination. Sometimes there are dragons. It isn’t an organizing analogy we use in our lives or in our politics. If we want nostalgia, we reach for the imagined America of the 1950s, or perhaps the settling of the wild west.

Oct 1, 2024 | liberalcurrents.com | Samantha Hancox-Li |Janet Bufton |Jacob Grier |Adam Gurri

The liberal ideal is that we ought always to be striving for an open society; a society that is “open to ideas,” “open to people,” and “open to change.” In an open society, if you hate your boss or your job, you can quit. If you hate where you live, you can move somewhere else. Artists do not need to fear offending either the church or the party. Citizens can criticize or even insult political leaders without fearing reprisal. Subcommunities can experiment with different lifestyles freely.

Nov 15, 2023 | americanpurpose.com | Richard Aldous |Jay Weiser |Jeffrey Herf |Adam Gurri

When we talk about the administrative state—or the permanent bureaucracy or even the executive branch—it sounds formless, vast, impersonal. Critics of it tend to see it as an almost invisible force, a “deep state” performing its sinister machinations beneath the cover of the visible state. When I think of the problems of the administrative state, I think of the Littles, Malcolm X’s family whose plight is recounted in The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965).