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
“A powerful and carefully developed argument for preserving American citizenship.”—American Thinker
“Required reading for all those who seriously want to engage in the fieriest issues of our days at their most thoughtful levels of depth.”—Epoch Times
“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
“Among public intellectuals writing within a secular framework about America’s troubles, Victor Davis Hanson towers above the rest.”—First Things
“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 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
“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
“Once again Victor Davis Hanson has written a masterly account of a great public affairs crisis. He has given a learned history of the concept and indispensability in a democracy of responsible citizenship; has perceptively chronicled how it has been undermined in the US; how Donald Trump in his sometimes frantic way tried to revive it, and of the tense but not unhopeful current prospects. This book is a concise masterpiece that all serious citizens should read.” —Conrad Black
“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
2021-10-25
Conservative historian Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, faults what he sees as a diminished respect for American citizenship.
What does it mean to be a “citizen”? In a deeply contextualized call to arms, Hanson moves from the ancient Greeks and Romans through the Federalists and Enlightenment philosophers to show how answers to the question have evolved and why he believes cherished ideals about American citizenship are under assault by progressives. As he sees it, “citizens must be economically autonomous.” Unless a sturdy middle class can achieve “material security,” a society divides into “masters and peasants.” That division shows up in the widening gap between the ultrarich and everyone else, including a “new American peasantry,” exemplified by student-debt–ridden millennials. In the author’s view, the forces hostile to a strong citizenry include globalization, “tribal” loyalties to ethnic or cultural groups instead of a place, and people or institutions who support those trends—e.g., sanctuary cities, “politically correct commissars,” and schools’ lack of adequate civics classes. Hanson offers a broader intellectual framework for the erosion of the middle class than analysts who focus on narrower aspects, such as the social and economic costs of lost jobs. While that perspective is valuable, his case often devolves into overfamiliar or one-sided denunciations of critics of Trump, a president he believes promoted the “sanctity” of citizenship and the “healing” of American divisions. He faults CNN journalists, for example, for their “repeated, obscene, and unprofessional anti-Trump outbursts” without mentioning Sean Hannity’s opposing rants at Fox News, to which Hanson contributes. For all his useful historical context on citizenship, even the staunchest conservatives may flinch at the tastelessness of his comment that CNN’s sins extended to “perhaps the late CNN host Anthony Bourdain joking in an interview about poisoning Trump.”
A wide-ranging perspective on citizenship undercut by unedifying assaults on Trump’s critics.
