[Hac-announce] May 2019 Book Discussion: "How Democracies Die" by Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt

[kvngough at aol.com]

Our book for May is How Democracies Die by Harvard professors of government Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt. The discussion will take place Saturday, May 18, 2019 at 2:30 pm in the library of the Unitarian Society of New Haven at 700 Hartford Turnpike, Hamden.(Note the starting time change to 2:30.)   From Amazon:Donald Trump’spresidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking:Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and DanielZiblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democraciesin Europe and Latin America, and they believethe answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution ormilitary coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of criticalinstitutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion oflong-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exitramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump,we have already passed the first one.

“The authors argue, with good evidence, that democraciesaren’t destroyed because of the impulses of a single man; they are, instead,degraded in the course of a partisan tit-for-tat dynamic that degrades normsover time until one side sees an opening to deliver the death blow. DonaldTrump is not a dictator. But it’s impossible to read How Democracies Diewithout worrying that our collective decay of democratic norms may open thedoor to one down the line—perhaps even one of an entirely different ideologicalpersuasion.”
– The Wall Street Journal

“Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies have collapsedelsewhere—not just through violent coups, but more commonly (and insidiously)through a gradual slide into authoritarianism.... How Democracies Die is alucid and essential guide to what can happen here.” – The New York Times

Supplementary Reading: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from theTwentieth Century by Timothy Snyder

Light snacks will be served.    
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