• Home
  • Independent Voter News
  • Quizzes
  • Election Dissection
  • Sections
  • Events
  • Directory
  • About Us
  • Glossary
  • Opinion
  • Campaign Finance
  • Redistricting
  • Civic Ed
  • Voting
  • Fact Check
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Newsletter>
  3. newsletter>

Op-eds of the week: Gun rights, Roe v. Wade and swing-state elections

The Fulcrum
June 04, 2022



Our weekly op-ed highlight reel

The Fulcrum is a forum for debate about what's ailing American democracy and what could make the system healthier. Here are the most recent arguments from our columnists and other contributors.

Pennsylvania offers a choice ... and a risk

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Republican voters in the Keystone State selected Doug Mastriano, an election denier, as their nominee for governor. In addition to taking the expected GOP positions on abortion rights, gun ownership and other issues, Mastriano has gone a step further, declaring his intent to force all Pennsylvania voters to start from scratch if they want to participate in future elections.

Author Lawrence Goldstone thinks that stance, and others taking by the nominee, might be just what the country needs to snap back to a pro-democracy stance, regardless of party affiliation.

That Mastriano is a big underdog who even the Republican Governors Association is pretending does not exist has not reassured cynical critics. To them, the very fact that he made it through the primaries is evidence that the country’s descent into anti-democracy has become inexorable. While they may ultimately be proven correct, Mastriano’s Nightmare on Broad Street candidacy might well be just what the nation needs to shock it out of its torpor.

Goldstone posits that a resounding defeat of Mastriano in the general election, following MAGA-backed David Perdue’s loss in Georgia’s Senate primary, might deliver a decisive message to swing voters across America.

Read more.

Additional reading: Can Pa. GOP candidate make voters re-register?

This rotation of the economic cycle feels different

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The economic cycle, by definition, moves through growth and retraction, often regardless of government intervention. But the latest downturn in the economy, with the problems created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine building on the earlier impact of the Covid pandemic, has David Nevins thinking this time is different.

The Fulcrum’s co-publisher wants us to consider how the ever-more interconnected global economy works when not every nation shares the same view of government and civil rights.

The globalization of the world economy has been expanding at an ever-increasing rate for the last four decades. The advancement of technology has broken down barriers allowing for a free exchange of goods and services. Yet this inter-connectivity comes with dependency upon nations that do not share our principles of freedom and human rights; they are not our friends. This dependency is what must be analyzed.

The benefits have been many, including lower prices for goods and commodities, but our love of a bargain has blinded us to the risks, or even deluded us into thinking that the economic interconnectivity will naturally result in greater cooperation on issues not related to economics, like expanded citizen rights.

Not every decision can be based purely on what’s better economically. We must also weigh adherence to democratic principles, David writes.

Read more.

Gun violence is a chronic disease. Health professionals must help prevent it.

Westend61/Getty Images

Robert Pearl, who teaches both medicine and business at Stanford, regularly writes about the intersection of health care and democracy for The Fulcrum. This week, in the wake of the murders in Buffalo and Uvalde, he explained why the medical community needs to get involved in stopping gun violence.

Shootings are now the leading cause of death among American children, making gun violence much more than a societal problem. It is a medical and ethical problem, as well – a chronic disease, growing in prevalence and severity, with no cure in sight.

If elected leaders won’t help, medical professionals – despite being overworked and increasingly burned out – can and must.

Keep reading.

What I tell my law students reversing Roe would mean for the rule of law

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Matthew Lawrence, an associate professor of law at Emory University, shared with our readers some of the discussions he leads when discussing Roe v. Wade and now Dobbs v. Jackson with his students.

His eight points include:

Third, I tell my students that the question for courts is not whether abortion should be a right or not, let alone whether it should be legal. Instead there are two legal questions before the courts: 1) Whether Roe and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey were correct that women have a fundamental constitutional right to choose to have an abortion, and 2) if not, whether to reverse them despite stare decisis.

Fourth, I tell my students those two legal questions are difficult ones on which reasonable lawyers can probably disagree. How one sees those questions depends on how one sees hard underlying questions of legal philosophy and constitutional interpretation, and because the precedent (especially on stare decisis) is foggy. I also tell my students that this is just my judgment and that they should read the opinions in Casey to form their own.

Read all eight.

newsletter

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

How a college freshman led the effort to honor titans of democracy reform

Jeremy Garson

Our poisonous age of absolutism

Jay Paterno

Re-imagining Title IX: An opportunity to flex our civic muscles

Lisa Kay Solomon

'Independent state legislature theory' is unconstitutional

Daniel O. Jamison

How afraid are we?

Debilyn Molineaux

Politicians certifying election results is risky and unnecessary

Kevin Johnson
latest News

How the anti-abortion movement shaped campaign finance law and paved the way for Trump

Amanda Becker, The 19th
14h

Podcast: Journalist and political junkie Ken Rudin

Our Staff
16h

A study in contrasts: Low-turnout runoffs vs. Alaska’s top-four, all-mail primary

David Meyers
23 June

Video: Team Democracy Urges Citizens to Sign SAFE Pledge

Our Staff
23 June

Podcast: Past, present, future

Our Staff
23 June

Video: America's vulnerable elections

Our Staff
22 June
Videos

Video: Memorial Day 2022

Our Staff

Video: Helping loved ones divided by politics

Our Staff

Video: What happened in Virginia?

Our Staff

Video: Infrastructure past, present, and future

Our Staff

Video: Beyond the headlines SCOTUS 2021 - 2022

Our Staff

Video: Should we even have a debt limit

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Did economists move the Democrats to the right?

Our Staff
02 May

Podcast: The future of depolarization

Our Staff
11 February

Podcast: Sore losers are bad for democracy

Our Staff
20 January

Deconstructed Podcast from IVN

Our Staff
08 November 2021
Recommended
Bridge Alliance intern Sachi Bajaj speaks at the June 12 Civvy Awards.

How a college freshman led the effort to honor titans of democracy reform

Leadership
abortion law historian Mary Ziegler

How the anti-abortion movement shaped campaign finance law and paved the way for Trump

Campaign Finance
Podcast: Journalist and political junkie Ken Rudin

Podcast: Journalist and political junkie Ken Rudin

Media
Abortion rights and anti-abortion protestors at the Supreme Court

Our poisonous age of absolutism

Big Picture
Virginia primary voter

A study in contrasts: Low-turnout runoffs vs. Alaska’s top-four, all-mail primary

Video: Team Democracy Urges Citizens to Sign SAFE Pledge

Video: Team Democracy Urges Citizens to Sign SAFE Pledge

Voting