Telos 216 (Fall 2026): Dangers to Democracy

Telos 216 (Fall 2026): Dangers to Democracy is now available for purchase in our store. Individual subscriptions to Telos are also available in both print and online formats.

As a form of government that depends on the people for decision-making, democracy requires, on the one hand, a basic unity of the people in terms of their political theological goals and, on the other hand, the procedural mechanisms that can translate popular sentiments into political decisions. A breakdown of the former can lead to civil war. A deterioration of the latter can lead to the suppression of independent associations by a demagogue or a faction. Democracies can thus die either through too little unity or too much. While our investigations of politics have often focused on the issue of political theology, Telos 216 is devoted to the dangers to democracy posed by the declining commitment to open debate, evidence-based reasoning, and pluralism.

Telos 216 (Fall 2026): Dangers to Democracy

Introduction
David Pan

The Illiberal Turn on the Left: Speech Regulation, Racial Identity, and Anti-Imperialist Alliances as Epistemic Failures (open access)
Srđan M. Jovanović

The Rise of Critical Race Theory: An Empirical Assessment
Part I: From Educational Frustration to the Lost Decade
Phillip W. Magness and Williamson M. Evers

Democratizing or Destroying Democracy: Tocqueville and Contemporary Challenges in and to Democracies (open access)
Anthony Petros Spanakos

Mirroring the Image? Trump, Thucydides, and the Theater of Democracy
Gregory Melleuish and Susanna G. Rizzo

Imagine: The DSA, Israel, and the Politics of Redemption
Ross Lewin

Two Kinds of War: Ukraine, Gaza, and the Strategic Watershed (open access)
Russell A. Berman

Notes and Commentary

Esoteric Writing in the Age of Generative AI
Ethan Stoneman and Joseph C. Packer

Reviews

The Sacred and the Secular: Marcel Gauchet’s Theological-Political Lens on Democracy’s Post-Totalitarian Trajectory
Clifford Angell Bates, Jr.

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Telos Press Publishing
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