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Illiberalism and Minority Rule in American History

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ClassGraphic The 2024 election could be the last free election held in a unified America. So warns the historian Robert Kagan in his latest book Rebellion (Knopf, 2024). How can that be in the birthplace of liberal democracy? Kagan recounts the history of opposition to liberalism that has been an element of American politics since the beginning. A straight line runs from the slaveholding South at the time of our founding, to the post-Reconstruction South of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, to the anti-immigrant movement of the 1920s, to Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society of the 1950s and 1960s, to the Christian nationalist movement of recent decades, and, now to the current MAGA takeover of the Republican Party. One might argue this illiberal democratic tradition has never been embraced by a majority of the American public. In our second book, Tyranny of the Minority (Crown, 2023), authors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt explain why this does not matter. They demonstrate how our Constitution can be an enabler of minority rule, allowing partisan minorities to consistently thwart and even overrule popular majorities. Join us during this election season as we seek to understand how we got here while we await to see what happens next.

Class Details

14 Session(s)
Weekly - Tue

Location
Wieboldt Hall

Instructor
MultipleInstructor :
1.Rosemary O'Shea2.Dan Burns 

Tuition: 

$0.00

Email olli@northwestern.edu for more information. Send to Friend » Request More Info »

Schedule Information

Date(s) Class Days Times Location Instructor(s)
9/3/2024 - 12/3/2024 Weekly - Tue 09:45 AM - 11:45 AM Chicago, Wieboldt Hall  Map Dan Burns  ; Rosemary O'Shea 

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