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The Dying Citizen

How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America

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The Dying Citizen

Written by: Victor Davis Hanson
Narrated by: James Edward Thomas
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About this listen

The New York Times best-selling author of The Case for Trump explains the decline and fall of the once cherished idea of American citizenship.

Human history is full of the stories of peasants, subjects, and tribes. Yet the concept of the “citizen” is historically rare — and was among America’s most valued ideals for over two centuries. But without shock treatment, warns historian Victor Davis Hanson, American citizenship as we have known it may soon vanish.

In The Dying Citizen, Hanson outlines the historical forces that led to this crisis. The evisceration of the middle class over the last 50 years has made many Americans dependent on the federal government. Open borders have undermined the idea of allegiance to a particular place. Identity politics have eradicated our collective civic sense of self. And a top-heavy administrative state has endangered personal liberty, along with formal efforts to weaken the Constitution.

As in the revolutionary years of 1848, 1917, and 1968, 2020 ripped away our complacency about the future. But in the aftermath, we as Americans can rebuild and recover what we have lost. The choice is ours.

©2021 Basic Books (P)2021 Basic Books
Ideologies & Doctrines Politics & Government
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What the critics say

"Mr. Hanson, an accomplished classicist and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is one of the great amalgamators of American political writing. He has a particular gift for bringing together a dizzying array of events, controversies and ideas and making sense of them by advancing a coherent argument that incorporates thousands of years of history… Mr. Hanson hits hard, but I don’t find his analysis unfair or partisan. There is enormous value, moreover, in thinking about toxic political developments not as problems of the moment but as destructive pathologies to which all societies are prone at all times.”—Wall Street Journal

“Indispensable… Hanson’s immensely erudite and inspiriting book offers a most welcome corrective to those influential forces and doctrines in our midst that conspire to delegitimize the citizen and citizenship as such. In doing so, he provides us with hope that our society still has within it significant powers of rejuvenation.”—National Review

“As Victor Davis Hanson shows in his learned, powerful, and troubling new book, The Dying Citizen, the steady devolution of citizenship speaks volumes about where we are today and where we seem to be heading… Hanson lays out this grim diagnosis with his usual clarity and brilliance, moving easily from his deep specialized knowledge of the ancient Greek and Roman world through savvy observations about present-day politics and American society.”—The New Criterion

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Important work

Victor Davis Hansen brings clarity and stoicism to his writing that even those who may not start out sharing his argument will surely be convinced by him in the end. In the times we find ourselves (mid 2022) this book takes on extra significance. Highly recommended

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Prolific and Sweeping View of Today's World!

Victor Davis Hanson is one of the most prolific writers I have ever experienced, and I am an avid follower. I am not even American!
As a Canadian, everything he writes about applies to all of the Western World in so many ways, and I thank him for his contribution in bringing 'Truth to Lies'.

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taking liberties...

The author starts out by listing "facts" to sustain his thesis... Problem is these "facts" are simply false presumptions...

"Citizenship is consensual"? About as consensual as picking up a hitchhiker, and offering them the choice between performing sex acts or exiting the fast moving vehicle...

"All citizens are treaded equally under law"? Apparently the author has never heard of incorporation or lobbying practices.

Thru then go on to act as though the constitution offers any more "protection" to its citizens than a "Gun-free Zone " sign.... The constitution protects its citizens from the government... As interpreted by the government.

Couldn't make it more than a chapter through this work of fiction.

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