Original Proposal - The Dying Concept of Citizenship & America’s Southern Border – April 18

[HLS Classmate]

Originally Posted Sun Dec 19, 2021 5:08 pm – 54 views in Sec. 3 (Possible Topics for Future Meetings) before being transplanted here.


I propose that we read “The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America” by Victor Davis Hanson (Basic Books 10/5/2021 – 346 pages sans footnotes and index – Hardcover $21.27 + shipping or $17.99 Kindle from Amazon.com).

The Salt Lake COUNTY Library has available 8 of 12 print copies (and 3 of 5 AUDIO E-books) and the Salt Lake CITY Library has available 0 of 2 print copies with no holds (and 2 of 2 AUDIO E-books)


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BOOK DESCRIPTION (from the book’s dust jacket)

Human history is full of the stories of peasants, subjects, and tribes. Yet the concept of the “citizen” is historically rare – and was, until recently, amongst America’s most profoundly cherished ideals. But without shock treatment, warns historian Victor Davis Hanson, American citizenship as we have known it may soon vanish.

[HLS Classmate editorial note – the Roman Empire (27 BC - 476 AD) had a well-defined concept of “Roman Citizen” which enabled St. Paul, whose Jewish name was Saul but who was a “Roman Citizen,” to demand from all of the Roman authorities who persecuted him throughout much of his life, the special rights of “Roman Citizens” – and he always received those rights.]

In “The Dying Citizen,” Hanson outlines the forces that led to this crisis. Over the last half century, numerous forces from both above and below have conspired to undermine the value we place in the idea of citizenship – and our vigilance in protecting it. To be self-governing, citizens must be economically autonomous, but the evisceration of the middle class and the rise of inequality have made many Americans dependent on the federal government. Citizenship exists within delineated borders – but open borders and the elite concept of “global citizenship” have rendered meaningless the idea of allegiance to a particular place. Citizenship relies on a renunciation of tribal identity in favor of the state, but identity politics have eradicated the idea of a collective civic sense of self. A vastly expanded unelected bureaucracy has overwhelmed the power of elected officials, thereby destroying the sovereign power of the citizen. Progressive academics and activists lay siege to the institutions and traditions of constitutional citizenship.

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.


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AUTHOR BIO

Professor Victor Davis Hanson (born September 5, 1953, PhD Stanford University) is an American commentator, classicist, and military historian. He has been a commentator on modern and ancient warfare and contemporary politics for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Review, The Washington Times, and other media outlets.

He is a professor emeritus of Classics at California State University, Fresno, and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in classics and military history at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush.

He is the author of more than two dozen books including –

• Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece. University of California Press, 1983.
• The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece. Alfred A. Knopf, 1989.
• The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization, Free Press, 1995.
• Fields Without Dreams: Defending the Agrarian Idea, Free Press, 1996.
• Who Killed Homer?: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom, with John Heath, Encounter Books, 1998.
• The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny, Free Press, 1999.
• The Wars of the Ancient Greeks: And the Invention of Western Military Culture, Cassell, 1999.
• The Land Was Everything: Letters from an American Farmer, Free Press, 2000.
• Bonfire of the Humanities: Rescuing the Classics in an Impoverished Age, with John Heath and Bruce S. Thornton, ISI Books, 2001.
• Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power, Doubleday, 2001.
• An Autumn of War: What America Learned from September 11 and the War on Terrorism, Anchor Books, 2002.
• Ripples of Battle: How Wars Fought Long Ago Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think, Doubleday, 2003.
• Between War and Peace: Lessons from Afghanistan and Iraq, Random House, 2004.
• A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War, Random House, 2005.
• The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern, Bloomsbury Press, 2010.
• The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost – From Ancient Greece to Iraq, Bloomsbury Press, 2013.
• The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, Basic Books, 2017.


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BOOK REVIEW EXCERPTS

“This is not a drill—this is the real thing. If you don’t believe that the survival of the American republic hangs in the balance, you must read Victor Davis Hanson’s relentless exposition of the facts. America’s free citizenry is at imminent risk of defeat at the hands of an unelected Deep State allied to a globalist elite that flouts American law with impunity and plans to jettison the Constitution. Even if you think you’re informed and alarmed about these trends, Hanson’s brilliant presentation will leave you much better prepared to address these dangers. Get this book into the hands of everyone you know.”
―David Goldman, deputy editor of Asia Times and author of You Will Be Assimilated

“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

“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 principles and responsibilities of self-governing nations. As Victor Davis Hanson explains, by subtle degrees we’re reversing course, through a deliberate attempt to dilute and eventually erase national identity, sovereignty, borders, and the meaningful content of citizenship itself. But if everyone is a “citizen of everywhere,” it means they are citizens of nowhere, with the return of autocratic rule the final result. The hour is late, and we have Hanson to thank for this capacious account of what we need to recover.”
―Steven F. Hayward, author of Patriotism Is Not Enough

“Hanson is well-positioned to describe the evolution of citizenship from ancient times through the modern era, and especially the assumptions about citizenship underlying America's constitutional order… Hanson presents, clearly and concisely, a case that critics will struggle to refute. His troubling argument has far-reaching implications. The Dying Citizen is a book that all Americans should read, then discuss with friends and neighbors.”
―Claremont Review of Books

“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

“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

“This is a book about an ongoing and threatening change of ‘regime,’ which means a change not only in how we are governed but also in how we live. To understand such a thing requires perspective: Victor Hanson is deeply educated in the classics, where knowledge of regimes was first developed. It also requires a close observation of what is happening today, about which he writes insightfully and in profusion. In this book, Hanson demonstrates yet again his command across time and for our time. This book and he are a treasure.”
―Larry P. Arnn, president of Hillsdale College