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Sign up todayRebellion
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Learn moreA chilling and clear-eyed warning about the threats to our democracy posed by the increasing radicalization of the Republican Party, from a leading historian and intellectual
The 2024 election could be the last free election held in a unified America. So warns Robert Kagan in this brilliant and terrifying analysis of the perilous state of democracy in the United States today. If Donald Trump loses the upcoming election, as he did in 2020, but refuses to accept the result, as he also did in the last election, he is likely to call on his millions of followers to repudiate the election results. It will be a short step from there to Republican-dominated states rejecting the legitimacy of the federal government and effectively seceding. The United States at that point will cease to be united, with grave consequences for both Americans and the world.
In Rebellion, Kagan dives deeper than the op-eds and think pieces to explore the historical forces that have brought us to this moment—in particular the long history of opposition to liberalism, and to government, that has shaped America’s character from the time of the Revolution to today. Trump’s unique capacity to tap into that tradition of dissent and circumvent the American system has brought us to the edge of dissolution—not for the first time in our history but possibly the last. This is an elegant and deeply informed synthesis of history, contemporary politics, and ideas that sheds light on this crucial moment.
ROBERT KAGAN is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a columnist for The Washington Post. He is the author of The Ghost at the Feast, The Return of History and the End of Dreams, Dangerous Nation, Of Paradise and Power, and A Twilight Struggle. He served in the U.S. State Department from 1984 to 1988. He lives in Virginia.
Reviews
"An alarming but useful perspective on antiliberalism....[A] timely, well-informed analysis....Kagan cogently examines the bright long-term prospects for the Founders’ concept of liberalism, especially with the nation’s rapidly changing demographics—if Trump does not win the election....A powerful, much-needed political and social analysis that all lovers of democracy should read."—Kirkus, starred
“Kagan details, mordantly, the anti-liberalism that emerged during and after the Civil War, a strain that, just as much as today’s version, insisted on a ‘Christian commonwealth’ founded essentially on wounded white working-class pride.” —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
"A concise but thorough tour through the influence of American liberalism’s malign twin . . . Kagan manages to diagnose both the acute and chronic nature of our present crisis." —Alan Elrod, Liberal Currents
“A brilliant analyst and polemicist, Kagan argues that the 2024 presidential election could be the last free election held in a unified United States. He justifies this dire warning with a detailed account of the right’s drift towards authoritarianism—and traces the historical roots of Donald Trump’s appeal to a long tradition of anti-liberal thought in the US.” —Gideon Rachman and Frederick Studemann, Financial Times Expand reviews
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