EBOOK
About
A demagogue is a tyrant who owes his initial rise to the democratic support of the masses. Huey Long, Hugo Chavez, and Moqtada al-Sadr are all clear examples of this dangerous byproduct of democracy. Demagogue takes a long view of the fight to defend democracy from within, from the brutal general Cleon in ancient Athens, the demagogues who plagued the bloody French Revolution, George W. Bush's naïve democratic experiment in Iraq, and beyond. This compelling narrative weaves stories about some of history's most fascinating figures, including Adolf Hitler, Senator Joe McCarthy, and General Douglas Macarthur, and explains how humanity's urge for liberty can give rise to dark forces that threaten that very freedom. To find the solution to democracy's demagogue problem, the book delves into the stories of four great thinkers who all personally struggled with democracy-Plato, Alexis de Tocqueville, Leo Strauss, and Hannah Arendt.
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"Since our founding, Americans have seen our country's mission as bringing democracy to people around the world. The past few years have seen a lot of debate about how to spread democracy, but almost none about how to keep it alive in places where it is under attack. With a grounding in history and philosophy, Michael Signer offers an original foreign policy vision for the 21st century that puts
Andrei Cherny, Co-Editor Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, author The Next Deal and The Candy