by Steven Lavine
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY is in trouble as never before. In the past, there have been moments when democratic process and democratic guarantees have been suspended — Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, the internment of the Japanese Americans during World War II, the McCarthy hearings with their extralegal destruction of lives and careers — and we have lived through tragic errors in judgment, as in the Vietnam War — but never has the whole system of America democracy been so fundamentally challenged as simply no longer able to meet the needs of its citizens.
Daily President Trump challenges some aspect of the balance of executive, congressional, and judicial powers that form the core of American democracy, descending into blatant illegality defended through lies that do not seem even intended to be believed so much as they are expressions of the conviction that “you elected me and now I can do what I want.”
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Read the full review of "In Defence of Democracy" at the LA Review of Books.