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This intensely interesting—and troubling—book is the product of a lifetime of reflection and study of democracy. In it, John Lukacs addresses the questions of how our democracy has changed and why we have become vulnerable to the shallowest possible demagoguery.
Lukacs contrasts the political systems, movements, and ideologies that have bedeviled the twentieth century: democracy, Liberalism, nationalism, fascism, Bolshevism, National Socialism, populism. Reflecting on American democracy, Lukacs describes its evolution from the eighteenth century to its current form—a dangerous and possibly irreversible populism. This involves, among other things, the predominance of popular sentiment over what used to be public opinion. This devolution has happened through the gigantic machinery of publicity, substituting propaganda—and entertainment—for knowledge, and ideology for a sense of history. It is a kind of populism that relies on nationalism and militarism to hold society together.
Lukacs’s observations are original, biting, timely, sure to inspire lively debate about the precarious state of American democracy today.
Anonymous
Posted June 2, 2005
I bought this after seeing the author speak of this work on C-span. He was confident with tough questions and I was curious. In retrospect he was like the mythic surgeon, often wrong, but never in doubt. The work's strong points are the grammar, spelling, and indexing. Use the latter to check an area of your own expertise. Then extrapolate from that to his accuracy in areas where you have no check. The author has read much,but seems to have understood little. He courts great thoughts but marries gibberish.He is unfairly cruel to other writers.
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Overview
This intensely interesting—and troubling—book is the product of a lifetime of reflection and study of democracy. In it, John Lukacs addresses the questions of how our democracy has changed and why we have become vulnerable to the shallowest possible demagoguery.
Lukacs contrasts the political systems, movements, and ideologies that have bedeviled the twentieth century: democracy, Liberalism, nationalism, fascism, Bolshevism, National Socialism, populism. Reflecting on American ...