Democracy in Chains
The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America
1 of 1 copy available
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Finalist for the National Book Award
The Nation's "Most Valuable Book"
“[A] vibrant intellectual history of the radical right.”—The Atlantic
“This sixty-year campaign to make libertarianism mainstream and eventually take the government itself is at the heart of Democracy in Chains. . . . If you're worried about what all this means for America's future, you should be.”—NPR
An explosive exposé of the right’s relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, stop action on climate change, and alter the Constitution.
*Now Updated With A New Preface*
Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect—the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan—and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority.
In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, Nancy MacLean shows how Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite’s power in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. In response to the widening of American democracy, he developed a brilliant, if diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us.
Corporate donors and their right-wing foundations were only too eager to support Buchanan’s work in teaching others how to divide America into “makers” and “takers.” And when a multibillionaire on a messianic mission to rewrite the social contract of the modern world, Charles Koch, discovered Buchanan, he created a vast, relentless, and multi-armed machine to carry out Buchanan’s strategy.
Without Buchanan's ideas and Koch's money, the libertarian right would not have succeeded in its stealth takeover of the Republican Party as a delivery mechanism. Now, with Mike Pence as Vice President, the cause has a longtime loyalist in the White House, not to mention a phalanx of Republicans in the House, the Senate, a majority of state governments, and the courts, all carrying out the plan. That plan includes harsher laws to undermine unions, privatizing everything from schools to health care and Social Security, and keeping as many of us as possible from voting. Based on ten years of unique research, Democracy in Chains tells a chilling story of right-wing academics and big money run amok. This revelatory work of scholarship is also a call to arms to protect the achievements of twentieth-century American self-government.
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Creators
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Awards
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Release date
June 13, 2017 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780525528722
- File size: 332172 KB
- Duration: 11:32:01
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Are you ready for an audiobook that will uncover, finally, the plot to privatize every aspect of American life, including Social Security, education, infrastructure, and the workforce? The author traces our present right-wing revolution back to the 1950s and an economist named James McGill Buchanan. The rest is, well, dependent upon your political persuasion. Bernadette Dunne narrates this explosive book with restraint and a rich, somewhat scratchy voice. She doesn't embellish her delivery, letting the words speak for themselves and presenting the work in an economical style. By approaching it this way, Dunne makes the audiobook both accessible and compelling. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine -
Starred review from April 10, 2017
MacLean (Freedom Is Not Enough) constructs an erudite, searing portrait of how the late political economist James McGill Buchanan (1919–2013) and his deep-pocketed conservative allies have reshaped—and undermined—American democracy. MacLean makes the convincing argument that an American “paloecapitalist” elite has sought to destroy our institutions in pursuit of their own “economic liberty.” Focusing on Buchanan, winner of the 1986 Noble Prize in Economics and mastermind behind public choice theory, MacLean traces his career and influence, including over former Virginia governor Harry Byrd and Chile’s former military ruler, Augusto Pinochet. In a thoroughly researched and gripping narrative, she exposes how Buchanan’s strategies shaped trends in government in favor of “corporate dominance” and against the welfare state. His theories, according to MacLean, influenced the push for privatizing education. Moreover, the cadre of wealthy libertarians he inspired still persists in contemporary politics. MacLean examines the reach of this powerful group and its think tanks, such as Charles Koch’s Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. She has delivered another deeply important book that will interest general readers and scholars alike. Her work here is a feat of American intellectual and political history. Agent: Susan Rabiner, Susan Rabiner Literary.
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