Most citizens, globally, are dissatisfied with democracy. The trend has been getting worse since 1995 despite the international elite’s increasing activism against this dissatisfaction’s supposed causes, including nationalism, Euroscepticism, racism, social injustice, inequity, conservatism, and populism. Fortunately, this pithy, accessible, and fearless little book containing essays by ten authors sets the record straight.
Roger Kimball, editor of the New Criterion, introduces the collection by contrasting the dominant narrative—in which progressives defend liberalism against hateful populists—with the unadmitted practice: in reality, progressives have imposed an “administrative, top-down, essentially illiberal form of governance.”
Angelo M. Codevilla’s chapter offers the pithiest explanation of their project. Progressives want supranational norms, rights, and institutions to become sovereign. Progressives characterize any resistance as undemocratic, even if it is popular. Relabelling “popular” as “populist” denies the sovereignty of the people. Then progressives spin unelected administrators as “democratic” just because they oppose populism....