The Victims of Democracy

The Victims of Democracy

Author: Eugene Victor Wolfenstein

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-04-28

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 0520332091

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This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.


Nation of Victims

Nation of Victims

Author: Vivek Ramaswamy

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2022-09-13

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1546002987

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The New York Times bestselling author of Woke Inc. and a 2024 presidential candidate makes the case that the essence of true American identity is to pursue excellence unapologetically and reject victimhood culture. Hardship is now equated with victimhood. Outward displays of vulnerability in defeat are celebrated over winning unabashedly. The pursuit of excellence and exceptionalism are at the heart of American identity, and the disappearance of these ideals in our country leaves a deep moral and cultural vacuum in its wake. But the solution isn’t to simply complain about it. It’s to revive a new cultural movement in America that puts excellence first again. Leaders have called Ramaswamy “the most compelling conservative voice in the country” and “one of the towering intellects in America,” and this book reveals why: he spares neither left nor right in this scathing indictment of the victimhood culture at the heart of America’s national decline. In this national bestseller, Ramaswamy explains that we’re a nation of victims now. It’s one of the few things we still have left in common—across black victims, white victims, liberal victims, and conservative victims. Victims of each other, and ultimately, of ourselves. This fearless, provocative book is for readers who dare to look in the mirror and question their most sacred assumptions about who we are and how we got here. Intricately tracing history from the fall of Rome to the rise of America, weaving Western philosophy with Eastern theology in ways that moved Jefferson and Adams centuries ago, this book describes the rise and the fall of the American experiment itself—and hopefully its reincarnation.


Democracy Betrayed

Democracy Betrayed

Author: David S. Cecelski

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 9780807847558

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This study draws together scholarship on the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and its aftermath. Contributors hope to draw attention to the tragedy, to honour its victims, and to bring a clear historical voice to the debate over its legacy.


Democracy in Retreat

Democracy in Retreat

Author: Joshua Kurlantzick

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2013-03-19

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 030018896X

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DIVSince the end of the Cold War, the assumption among most political theorists has been that as nations develop economically, they will also become more democratic—especially if a vibrant middle class takes root. This assumption underlies the expansion of the European Union and much of American foreign policy, bolstered by such examples as South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, and even to some extent Russia. Where democratization has failed or retreated, aberrant conditions take the blame: Islamism, authoritarian Chinese influence, or perhaps the rise of local autocrats./divDIV /divDIVBut what if the failures of democracy are not exceptions? In this thought-provoking study of democratization, Joshua Kurlantzick proposes that the spate of retreating democracies, one after another over the past two decades, is not just a series of exceptions. Instead, it reflects a new and disturbing trend: democracy in worldwide decline. The author investigates the state of democracy in a variety of countries, why the middle class has turned against democracy in some cases, and whether the decline in global democratization is reversible./div


The Death of Democracy

The Death of Democracy

Author: Benjamin Carter Hett

Publisher: Henry Holt and Company

Published: 2018-04-03

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1250162513

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A riveting account of how the Nazi Party came to power and how the failures of the Weimar Republic and the shortsightedness of German politicians allowed it to happen. Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In The Death of Democracy, Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances for our own time. To say that Hitler was elected is too simple. He would never have come to power if Germany’s leading politicians had not responded to a spate of populist insurgencies by trying to co-opt him, a strategy that backed them into a corner from which the only way out was to bring the Nazis in. Hett lays bare the misguided confidence of conservative politicians who believed that Hitler and his followers would willingly support them, not recognizing that their efforts to use the Nazis actually played into Hitler’s hands. They had willingly given him the tools to turn Germany into a vicious dictatorship. Benjamin Carter Hett is a leading scholar of twentieth-century Germany and a gifted storyteller whose portraits of these feckless politicians show how fragile democracy can be when those in power do not respect it. He offers a powerful lesson for today, when democracy once again finds itself embattled and the siren song of strongmen sounds ever louder.


Torchbearers of Democracy

Torchbearers of Democracy

Author: Chad L. Williams

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2010-09-20

Total Pages: 469

ISBN-13: 0807899356

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For the 380,000 African American soldiers who fought in World War I, Woodrow Wilson's charge to make the world "safe for democracy" carried life-or-death meaning. Chad L. Williams reveals the central role of African American soldiers in the global conflict and how they, along with race activists and ordinary citizens, committed to fighting for democracy at home and beyond. Using a diverse range of sources, Torchbearers of Democracy reclaims the legacy of African American soldiers and veterans and connects their history to issues such as the obligations of citizenship, combat and labor, diaspora and internationalism, homecoming and racial violence, "New Negro" militancy, and African American memories of the war.


The Problem of Democracy

The Problem of Democracy

Author: Nancy Isenberg

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2020-04-14

Total Pages: 578

ISBN-13: 0525557520

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"Told with authority and style. . . Crisply summarizing the Adamses' legacy, the authors stress principle over partisanship."--The Wall Street Journal How the father and son presidents foresaw the rise of the cult of personality and fought those who sought to abuse the weaknesses inherent in our democracy. Until now, no one has properly dissected the intertwined lives of the second and sixth (father and son) presidents. John and John Quincy Adams were brilliant, prickly politicians and arguably the most independently minded among leaders of the founding generation. Distrustful of blind allegiance to a political party, they brought a healthy skepticism of a brand-new system of government to the country's first 50 years. They were unpopular for their fears of the potential for demagoguery lurking in democracy, and--in a twist that predicted the turn of twenty-first century politics--they warned against, but were unable to stop, the seductive appeal of political celebrities Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. In a bold recasting of the Adamses' historical roles, The Problem of Democracy is a major critique of the ways in which their prophetic warnings have been systematically ignored over the centuries. It's also an intimate family drama that brings out the torment and personal hurt caused by the gritty conduct of early American politics. Burstein and Isenberg make sense of the presidents' somewhat iconoclastic, highly creative engagement with America's political and social realities. By taking the temperature of American democracy, from its heated origins through multiple upheavals, the authors reveal the dangers and weaknesses that have been present since the beginning. They provide a clear-eyed look at a decoy democracy that masks the reality of elite rule while remaining open, since the days of George Washington, to a very undemocratic result in the formation of a cult surrounding the person of an elected leader.


Democracy Incorporated

Democracy Incorporated

Author: Sheldon S. Wolin

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2017-08-29

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0691178488

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Democracy is struggling in America--by now this statement is almost cliché. But what if the country is no longer a democracy at all? In Democracy Incorporated, Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"? Wolin portrays a country where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive--and where elites are eager to keep them that way. At best the nation has become a "managed democracy" where the public is shepherded, not sovereign. At worst it is a place where corporate power no longer answers to state controls. Wolin makes clear that today's America is in no way morally or politically comparable to totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, yet he warns that unchecked economic power risks verging on total power and has its own unnerving pathologies. Wolin examines the myths and mythmaking that justify today's politics, the quest for an ever-expanding economy, and the perverse attractions of an endless war on terror. He argues passionately that democracy's best hope lies in citizens themselves learning anew to exercise power at the local level. Democracy Incorporated is one of the most worrying diagnoses of America's political ills to emerge in decades. It is sure to be a lightning rod for political debate for years to come. Now with a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Chris Hedges, Democracy Incorporated remains an essential work for understanding the state of democracy in America.


Crises of Democracy

Crises of Democracy

Author: Adam Przeworski

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-09-26

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1108498809

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Examines the economic, social, cultural, as well as purely political threats to democracy in the light of current knowledge.


Toward Leader Democracy

Toward Leader Democracy

Author: Jan Pakulski

Publisher: Anthem Press

Published: 2012-01-15

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1843317710

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In today’s liberal democracies, does the political process focus on the people, or on the political leaders representing them? Building upon the ideas of Joseph Schumpeter and Max Weber, ‘Toward Leader Democracy’ argues that we are currently seeing a movement toward an increasingly pronounced focus on political leaders – ‘leader democracy’. This form of democracy is fashioned by the political will, determination and commitment of top politicians, and is exercised through elite persuasion that actively shapes the preferences of voters so as to give meaning to political processes. As the text reveals, this marks a definite evolution within the world’s ‘advanced democracies’: democratic representation is today realised increasingly through active political leadership, as opposed to the former practices of statistically ‘mirroring’ constituencies, or the deliberative self-adjustment of the executive to match citizen preferences.