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  • The Dying Citizen

  • How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America
  • By: Victor Davis Hanson
  • Narrated by: James Edward Thomas
  • Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
  • 4.8 out of 5 stars (23 ratings)

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The Dying Citizen

By: Victor Davis Hanson
Narrated by: James Edward Thomas
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Summary

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
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Critic reviews

"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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An eye opener!

Recomend for the understanding of the greatest crisis of the West since ww2. The raise of the neo Marxism.

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Citizenship is the Cornerstone of a Democracy

Dr. Hanson provides any serious and dedicated American Citizen with a clear understanding of the importance ot citizenship and the citizen's role in preserving and sustaining the sovereignty and unity of our nation. He describes clearly the threats to our form of government by those who are willing to destroy the idea of citizenship to make our nation no longer based upon the sovereignty of the people but upon the sovereignty of the state and its bureaucracy. He challenges all citizens to resist the movement of our nation towards the death of citizenship which is the cornwrstone of our democracy.

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Thought provoking

I wouldn’t say a book like this is good as it’s contents can be unsettling. However, there are things I would say in the current climate of the U.S. that seem off to me, and Hanson delivers a well made argument based upon history and current events of movements that seem to be changing the fabric of the country. He places his finger on points that make me think

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Review of The Dying Citizen

This is a very educative, illuminating and timely book that advocates strongly for citizenship. I recommend it for everyone.

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