Daniel Chirot
America’s self-confidence in its institutions is collapsing. The consequences are already grave and they will get worse. The United States is not unique, and as recent articles in the Journal of Democracy and many other publications show, attitudes about the legitimacy of democracy are falling throughout the world.
That European democracies are afflicted by a crisis of confidence as much as the United States suggests a kind of growing malaise about the value of democratic capitalism and the very essence of what used to be called the Enlightenment project. As recently as the 1990s the very opposite appeared to be taking place, fulfilling the dreams and hopes of more than two centuries of struggle. In three decades, all that is quickly fading.
On the American political left, much of that decline is reflected in the increasing sense of guilt about the country’s history. Few publications express this more vividly than Nikole Hannah-Jones’ book The 1619 Project, published and relentlessly promoted by the New York Times. The central ideas are that America was founded as a slave society, has never fundamentally changed its exploitative racism, and has never had any major redeeming qualities. A brief quote shows that it is not just racism but the nature of its economic system that is at fault.
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