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

Publisher's 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

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

Nailed It

VDH is an extremely intelligent professor who has an extensive background in history. He is able to succinctly put the disastrous policies our country has adopted into perspective and the damage to the average citizen. A must read for everyone before it is too late.

Hanson knows is stuff.

This book should be in every civics class room.
I should be manditory reading for every student. No socialist pseudo professor should be allowed to rip it apart.
I could not put it down!

Superb

This is a book that should be required readding for every citizen (legal and illegal) in order to understand the recent chaos and lunacy of the past several years. We are in a time of major change in our lives, and most of us aren' een aware of it Victor Hanson has a historian's long range view and perspective that is rare, combined with an inteligence that is also rare. We are desperately in need of both.

Truth

The truth is so hard to find in this polarized society. Thank God for Prof. Hanson.

Clinically precise

A masters review of what exactly our collective trajectory is looking into our future.

Superbly characterized and elucidated in granular fashion

Victor now that your house is fixed get back To speaking and writing these are pressing times we need your input

Incredible book

One of my new favorite books. In a similar type of deep analysis as displayed in The Case for Trump, Hansen breaks down all of the problems which currently plague our country as a result of the virtue-signalling woke crowd, more concerned with their self-absorbtion than helping everyday Americans. No review can do justice to the brilliance of Hansen's analysis. Everyone who cares about the political divide currently plaguing this country should read this book.

Nailed it!

Every American who loves their family and country and enjoys the freedoms that we have been blessed with, needs to read this book.

Evoking

Enjoyed it all. This book made me more socially aware of my position in civilization.

Wow -

This book is a “must read” book on many levels.

I recommend it highly. Check it out.

Accurate Statistics

I believe in national democracy and strongly oppose a global society. Thank you for clearly describing the consequences of a world shared government with dictators.