Politics & Government
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The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America
The New York Times bestselling 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 fifty 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.
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 fifty 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.
Editorial Reviews
"The Dying Citizen is essential reading for any American who cares about the fate of our nation."―Mark R. Levin
"In The Dying Citizen, Victor Davis Hanson shows once again why he is America's premier scholar, writer, and political observer. Drawing on his training as a classicist, and clearly informed by his deep personal experience living and farming in California's San Joaquin Valley, Hanson has written a tour de force on the history, rights, and responsibilities of modern citizenship, and the galaxy of forces that are undermining the concept of American citizenship today. Immensely enlightening but also deeply unsettling, The Dying Citizen is a wake-up call for our countrymen who want to preserve the American ideal for future generations."―Rep. Devin Nunes
"Citizenship brings all the enduring principles of democracy into the sphere of the individual. It honors the human need for a collective identity even as it makes room for the individual to pursue happiness. In this remarkably illuminating book, Victor Davis Hanson shows how so many contemporary problems-identity politics, the border crisis, bloated government, etc.-have only worsened for the lack of a vigorous and clarifying idea of citizenship. In this deeply democratic idea, Hanson points to a way beyond what ails us."
―Shelby Steele, author of Shame
"Politicians often speak to "my fellow citizens," implying a kind of common project among all citizens. In America, that project is our shared devotion to our founding principles. Victor Davis Hanson explains in The Dying Citizen, however, that this uniquely American concept of citizenship is imperiled-whether from ancient threats like economic stagnation, open borders, and racial discord, or modern ones like unelected bureaucrats, anti-Constitution progressives, and globalists. As only he can, Hanson weaves together history, philosophy, and contemporary headlines to diagnose our current woes and to remind them that the cure lies in what is best in them and in America."―Senator Tom Cotton
"Victor Davis Hanson's book is not a complaint nor a polemic but rather a fine-grained diagnosis of a very serious disease. Its symptoms are all around us: the fragmentation of America's national identity by the assertion of not merely separate but separatist identities with the vehement support of the most privileged of all Americans. May this brilliant diagnosis lead us to a cure."―Edward N. Luttwak, author of The Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy
"The great glory of the democratic revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was extending the blessings of citizenship to anyone and everyone who embraced the pr...
"In The Dying Citizen, Victor Davis Hanson shows once again why he is America's premier scholar, writer, and political observer. Drawing on his training as a classicist, and clearly informed by his deep personal experience living and farming in California's San Joaquin Valley, Hanson has written a tour de force on the history, rights, and responsibilities of modern citizenship, and the galaxy of forces that are undermining the concept of American citizenship today. Immensely enlightening but also deeply unsettling, The Dying Citizen is a wake-up call for our countrymen who want to preserve the American ideal for future generations."―Rep. Devin Nunes
"Citizenship brings all the enduring principles of democracy into the sphere of the individual. It honors the human need for a collective identity even as it makes room for the individual to pursue happiness. In this remarkably illuminating book, Victor Davis Hanson shows how so many contemporary problems-identity politics, the border crisis, bloated government, etc.-have only worsened for the lack of a vigorous and clarifying idea of citizenship. In this deeply democratic idea, Hanson points to a way beyond what ails us."
―Shelby Steele, author of Shame
"Politicians often speak to "my fellow citizens," implying a kind of common project among all citizens. In America, that project is our shared devotion to our founding principles. Victor Davis Hanson explains in The Dying Citizen, however, that this uniquely American concept of citizenship is imperiled-whether from ancient threats like economic stagnation, open borders, and racial discord, or modern ones like unelected bureaucrats, anti-Constitution progressives, and globalists. As only he can, Hanson weaves together history, philosophy, and contemporary headlines to diagnose our current woes and to remind them that the cure lies in what is best in them and in America."―Senator Tom Cotton
"Victor Davis Hanson's book is not a complaint nor a polemic but rather a fine-grained diagnosis of a very serious disease. Its symptoms are all around us: the fragmentation of America's national identity by the assertion of not merely separate but separatist identities with the vehement support of the most privileged of all Americans. May this brilliant diagnosis lead us to a cure."―Edward N. Luttwak, author of The Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy
"The great glory of the democratic revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was extending the blessings of citizenship to anyone and everyone who embraced the pr...
Readers Top Reviews
BrianBrawdy Jonath
It’s been said that once a handout is codified in law, no future politician will ever rescind the statute. Seems that once a lie is told by the deep state, it also will never be retracted.
Ronald E. Parsons
I don't believe I am exaggerating when I style Victor Davis Hanson's <The Dying Citizen> a tour de force. The writer of one of the blurbs recommending it expects it to become Hanson's magnum opus. The book's subtitle "How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America" accurately describes the book's content. <Dying Citizen> is divided into two parts. The 1st is "Precitizens." The 2nd is "Postcitizens." The overarching idea above each part is: Citizenship is the sine qua non for the successful existence of a nation-state. The book goes on to describe three (3) social classes that do not rise to the level of citizenship. A chapter is devoted to each class. Number #1 is Peasants. # 2 is Residents. #3 is Tribes. The peasantry consists of persons who are beholden to an overlord. Some are tied to the land. Others aren't, but nevertheless have no say in affairs of state. Residents are akin to persons who are simply passing through. They have little or no interest in the welfare of the place. They know their limitations Tribesmen are customarily viewed as having responsibilities to immediate family and others in the tribe. A territory will ordinarily contain two or more tribes. Every territory might begin with the above 3 classes. When the classes become fortunate enough to view the real importance of their being free individuals in a single territory, they will exist as a nation towards which they have serious responsibilities, just as they become 'protectees' (not the author's term) in common, of their nation. Such freeborn persons will become citizens. Part Two, Postcitizens, describes what can happen when the citizenry of a nation begin to change or reverse the process described above. Such a revision, if agreed to by the citizenry, will likely be enough to allow the nation to continue in said status. It will be considered as ongoing success nationally. But if the nation is unlucky, its citizenry will allow themselves to fall into a massive bureaucratic existence in which the bureaucrats begin to view themselves as overly-important to the state. Factions will come into existence. And if unable to resolve their differences, they can become insoluble, and as a further result, dissolution of one sort or another might come to pass. There can be civil war. There can be a dictatorship. There can even be a movement towards 'One-World' government, giving power to a United Nations sort of overseer, in which no one will be satisfied. World disorder and warfare, rather than being overcome, will become the prevailing status. Elements will revolt against a 'One-size-fits-all' type non- government. A world-citizenry will be forever unstable, despite the beliefs and efforts of the starry-eyed 'Globalists' who wish for unity. This revi...
Reader
I knew the book might be brilliant as the all previous ones, but this one touch the most and deepest strings of our society and our everyday's life. The sound is high and very well pitched. Bravo Maestro!
Texas
The Dying Citizen by historian Victor Davis Hansen is an impressive study chronicling the rise of the idea of democracy and concepts of what citizenship entailed as civilizations developed, thrived, and failed. He highlights the various classes that developed in Ancient Greece and Roman times that laid the foundation for our modern world leading to the most precious of documents…the Constitution of the United States. He then proceeds to point out the attacks coming from abroad (globalization) and domestically (leftist progressivism) that assail it. This is a book that should be read by all patriotic Americans who are aghast at the direction we’re heading. I voluntarily reviewed an advance copy of this book from NetGalley. Highly recommend.
Tony Meyer
Slam dunk, Victor Davis Hansen is the most outstanding intellectual of our times. He is a renaissance man - - being a top classicist, premier historian and perceptive political commentator of our changing world. And all this rolled into one! With his deep understanding of currrent events, and his vast understanding of history, Victor Davis Hansen delineates our caste system - - so to speak, and its history. It is not a nice word to pigeon-hole someone an "intellectual" in today's world, so i use that word sparingly. But with Victor Davis Hansen i utilize that word with admiration. When Prof Hansen speaks i listen. He inspires me to learn and to study plus ask questions. I say to everyone BON APETITE, as you feast on this new classic of Victor Davis Hansen. Even if you don't read this masterpiece, at least make it part of your permanent library,. Together with Thucydides, Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Jefferson and other great writers, also belongs Victor Davis Hansen.
