Curated playlist
Political theories
- AuthoritarianismAuthoritarian rulers guard against coups by building armed forces that run parallel to the regular military.
- TotalitarianismThe word totalitarianism began in 1923 as an insult, and Mussolini's fascists wore it proudly.
- ConservatismConservatism has been called a "philosophy of human imperfection."
- Absolute monarchyRussia was the last European country to abolish absolute monarchy. Its rule by one king or tsar ended only in 1905.
- ImperialismImperialism began as a word for Napoleon III's invasions. By the 1880s it sounded positive in the West.
- ConscriptionConscription law is nearly four thousand years old. Babylon's Hammurabi required subjects to serve around 1791 BC.
- Racial segregationIn 1959, shared restrooms at a Southern Rhodesia theater sparked "The Battle of the Toilets."
- ScandinavismScandinavism, a movement for uniting Scandinavia, collapsed in a single war in 1864.
- SlavophiliaSome founders of Slavophilia wore pre-Petrine robes to make a point. It urged Russia to grow from its own past.
- MilitarismPrussia once spent 73 percent of its yearly budget on its army. A writer said it was an army with a country.
- RevanchismRevanchism takes its name from the French word for revenge. It was born after the Franco-Prussian War in the 1870s.
- ObjectivismObjectivism is a philosophical system that Russian-American writer Ayn Rand once boiled down to a single sentence. She called it "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with…
- Enlightened absolutismEmperor Joseph II summed up his rule in nine words: "Everything for the people, nothing by the people."
- Domino theoryThe domino theory began as a casual image offered at a news conference on the 7th of April 1954. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had been asked about communism in Indochina. He answered by describing a row of dominoes set on end. Knock over…