Seven Instruments of Pushing Back
When the Voice That Pushes Back Is Silenced From Within
Institutions do not always fall to a blow from outside. Often they fall because they silenced the voice inside that was pushing them back from error.
FoundationsPeace Is Pushing Back Too: A Reading of Hudaybiyya
Not every push is a confrontation. Sometimes the strongest push is to move the conflict from a field where your adversary excels to one where you do.
SocietyWhen People Walked: Organised Collective Pushing Back
An individual who refuses an injustice alone is punished. A community that refuses together, and organised, changes the law.
EconomicsThe Oil Weapon: A Push That Roused the Pushed
When one side uses its resource as a weapon, it wins a round and, at the same time, starts a race to do without it.
TechnologyThe Sputnik Shock: How Fear Built the Internet
The greatest technological leaps were not always born of curiosity, but of the feeling that the adversary had got there first.
PoliticsThe Parchment That Cannot Protect Itself: The Lesson of Magna Carta
Written rights do not live by their ink. They live as long as there is a force behind them able to push back whoever wants to tear them up.
ElectionsThe Weight of a Vote: When a Single Ballot Decided Who Governs
We say a single vote changes nothing. In Virginia in 2017 a single vote, then a slip of paper in a bowl, changed the balance of an entire legislature.
MilitaryAt ʿAyn Jalut: Breaking the Myth of the Invincible Army
The most dangerous thing about a rising power is not its weapons but the myth that runs ahead of it. The first push begins when someone refuses to believe the myth.