Word: sphere
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...Nino affected North America in the past. Before 1920, they found, El Nino appears to have affected a much larger region of the U.S. than it does today, channeling winter rain and snow all the way up into the Great Lakes and Great Plains. Afterward, however, its sphere of influence retreated to northern Mexico and the American Southwest. Why the shift? It may be, Cole suggests, that El Nino is overlaid on a different climate cycle that is even more important...
...argues that democratic societies should engage in substantive deliberation over serious moral issues in order to achieve "mutually acceptable" conclusions. Berkowitz deconstructs not just this linguistic dodge, but also the authors' liberal assumptions which do not contest the principles of natural liberty and equality and therefore theoretically limit the sphere of deliberative democracy to second-generation questions...
...homophobic to concede that leading a homosexual lifestyle may be a choice, and that it may not be right for everyone. As neuroscientist and gay activist Simon LeVay notes in his book Queen Science, "In the end one has to respect an individual's autonomy, at least in the sphere of personal activity that does not harm others." While it's probably true that those who believe that gays have no choice whatsoever are most likely to support gay rights, if this is not the case, anti-gay forces are in an indefensible position nonetheless. After all, our rights...
...there are some problems with Cotton's formulation. For one, nowhere does Habermas say that we should abandon elected government. As he writes in "Further Reflections on the Public Sphere," "Discourses do not govern. They generate a communicative power that cannot take the place of administration, but can only influence it. This influence is limited to procurement and withdrawal of legitimation. Communicative power cannot supply a substitute for the systematic inner logic of public bureaucracies" (in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun...
...other words, Habermas is all for maintaining the institutions of representative government-including the politicians. What concerns him is their source of legitimacy in society. Habermas believes that our institutions should derive their authority from a vibrant public sphere in which individuals communicate with one another as equals, putting their private interests aside and allowing the best arguments to hold sway. Anything less--for example, a "public sphere" in which might makes right, or where certain voices aren't listened to--would seem to violate the cherished liberal, democratic principle that human beings are free and equal...