This book is very detailed. As it should be. A long read and my case a 17 hour listen on Audible. I actually gave up on the reading. It was to verbose for me with words and concepts above my pay grade. The listen was easier. Sorry, I am not lazy, but with a two hour commute every day back and forth to work…I got to do something with time. Constructive use if it is quite important to me…either listening to Mark Levin Show daily podcasts or listening to books like this.

This book definitely provides the reader on every aspect of how the American citizen is “dying”. Each chapter provides a very insightful and profound look on how this happening. Dr. Hansen is on point on all aspects of this conundrum. The American citizen was a result of historical events that happened over many thousands of years. To be an American up until recently was an honor, but now not so much. Whether it’s deluded by unfettered immigration, draconian government mandates, ignoring the Constitution completely et al, the American citizen has been nearly eliminated from having any importance at all.

A sad state of affairs indeed. But, truly citizenship is an international problem befalling most countries around the world. This more of pandemic than COVID. The ramifications of the dying citizen is becoming irreparable to the point of no return. Dr. Hansen is brilliant in his soliloquy of facts that he has researched, gleaned, and put all into context so everyone can understand. If the reader does not, then it is either because they cannot comprehend what was read or the concepts are to intricate to understand. Whatever the case, find a way to absorb was has been written whether through an audiobook or logging on line and watch the free 8 part (30 mins each) presentation from Dr. Victor Davis Hansen from Hillsdale College.

This subject matter in this book is imperative for everyone that cares about America to read and learn about.

In the US History course that I teach we explore the idea of "What does it mean to be American?' This book is a really great resource to examine this idea. It has been very helful.

A tremendously interesting book by, I daresay, a polymath author like Victor Davis Hanson is bound to be interesting and thought-provoking. And indeed this book, beyond those typical qualities, is quite readable.

Hanson’s overall thesis is that the American ideal is being destroyed. The notion of America’s foundational values is ebbing due to a number of factor’s not the least of which is the elite institutions, whether the federal bureaucracy and the attendant elected leaders, academia, media, universities and so forth, have been capture by the idea (for various reasons) of the ‘global citizen’ which is the diminishment of the American citizen.

Hanson makes his point by a brief overview of how the idea of citizenship even evolved from mere peasantry, with no real political rights, to the idea of the nation-state and residency, to the larger but equally irrelevant idea of tribal belonging.

From these “pre-citizen ideas comes the themes of the trend of the ‘electeds’ becoming the unelected “blob” (my words) conjuring a future where globalism leads to particularly American ideas being exported whether the rest of the world welcomes these ideas or not, and yet the average American citizen is left to the vagaries of the globalized world and punished for being distinctly “American.”

I personally never bought into the criticisms of the global citizen or globalism, but understand and have seen enough to understand how “free-trade” and changes to the American marketplace have changed America. The author opened my eyes to the seemingly implacable attitudes that at once poo-poo the idea of American exceptionalism and yet attack its’ own citizens for believing in such ‘provincialism” and yet believe that the veneer of American civilization is what exporting “our” values means for the rest of the world. Yet at the same time, a demand for autocratic tendencies for Americans is what the “elite institutions” demand for Americans. This is seen by the worship of China and the way we want to import cheap goods and services from overseas whether this diminishes American strength and the vitality of the citizen.

Indeed the fundamental contradiction of this attitude is what the book is about. The ‘state’ and attendant institutions grow larger in intent, while diminishing the idea of American citizenship. I think this book could be applied write large to western-style democracies including England, but the point is made. We have an illusion of a republic, while the very institutions meant to run the system are busy trying to limit the power of the individual. We are supposed to be republican (small 'r') in values, yet become more autocratic in how the institutions believe the attachment to the citizens should be in relation to power.

Hanson writes of the 2020 pandemic year in an epilogue, which really drives home the point and thesis of his book. Mr. Hanson is a truly well-received writer with this reviewer because of his sober and reasoned analysis. I find as well that he writes in a clear but scholarly way. I would hope this book finds a wide-audience because it is well-written and has something to say for most readers, whether they believe this or not. This is because the larger the state, the smaller the citizen and what we are collectively witnessing is the increasing power of the state being transformed the diminishment of all Americans, whether they choose to believe it or believe it is valuable (I, along with Hanson do not).

A very worthwhile book, a pleasure to read (though disturbing) and recommended.

This was very interesting and the author really explained his logic thoroughly and precisely in layman's terms. Well done.

This was a fascinating dive into the changes to the role of the citizen in American society. Hanson did a great job of charting the path to this current style of citizen, which he argues is dying. I would highly recommend this great work of his.

In his forthcoming book, the Dying Citizen, noted historian Victor Davis Hanson cogently explains the roots of citizenship in the ancient Greek democracies and traces the modern-day threats to citizenship in current America.

Hanson begins his treatise by discussing the citizens of the ancient Greek republics who were, for the most part, middle-class people who saw themselves protected by laws rather than by transitory goodwill or the patronage of aristocrats and were thus enabled and emboldened to produce and create. That idea of citizenship with responsibilities and rights has been expanded over the past 200 plus years to include the poor, women, and minorities, creating the free-est country in the history of the world.

Yet, now that idea of citizenship is threatened by the shrinking of the middle-class in a world where jobs have been shipped overseas and the middle-class of the most affluent and technology advanced state (California) cannot afford a home and cannot afford to raise their families there. Without the middle-class, the world becomes the rich elites who do not need the protection of government because they are transnational and can go anywhere and the impoverished uneducated who have not learned the values of democracy.

Secondly, Hanson points out that there is a dilution in distinction now between citizens and residents so that those who come here illegally have the same rights as those who were born here and those who followed the rules. This illegal immigration has resulted in jurisdictions where they openly defy federal law, weakening the rule of law and the protections of law that so many have counted on. It has also resulted in untold thousands of criminals among the many essentially decent people who have crossed the border illegally, but in such numbers that even a small minority of criminals have caused unimaginable havoc and suffering on those who relied on the government to protect them from criminals.

The third threat to citizenship and democracy that Hanson identifies is the breakdown of Americans into separate identity tribes as opposed to one national identity. This, in turn, causes harm to patriotism and to adherence to shared values and history. He notes that “the story of the United States was never just a simplistic psychodrama” of different racial groups warring, but often a tale of class antagonism. Notably, though, the founding documents offered a “sanctioned pathway out of bias to a fairer and more racially blind society.” Multiculturalism fragments citizenship into racial categories and divides us further. Opposed to tribalism though is individualism and the American ideal is to each be treated on their own merit, not based on shared characteristics.

The fourth threat to citizenship identified in this book is the unelected whether that is the ever-growing power of the deep state, the unelected bureaucracy which thinks it knows better than the ordinary citizen. “The bureaucratic threat, then, to classical citizenship is an ascendance of a virtual unelected aristocracy or rigged oligarchy that exercises power in a manner that does not reflect consensual government.” These powerful elites have also of late taken root in the journalistic industry which no longer purports to be neutral and whose biases are now clearer than ever and more partisan than ever.

The fifth threat is called evolutionaries, that is, those who would do away with our common heritage and throw out the baby with the bathwater, trashing the constitution, the amendments, the makeup of the Supreme Court, the freedoms we hold dear. Elites now are piecemeal attacking the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, and wielding whatever power they deem right to suit their ends.

Finally, the sixth threat to citizenship is globalism whereby the elites have decreed that all civilizations are equal and that there is nothing to be admired about the free United States. In service of globalism, it is often the middle and lower classes that suffer as their jobs are shipped out of country and their lives are hollowed out. Globalism also results in submission to world bodies dominated by Iran and North Korea where the idea of human rights is not serious and our sovereignty is gifted to international bodies who do not have our interests at heart.

Thus, there are today a number of ever-escalating threats to freedom and democracy and our way of life and we had better recognize the thin ice we are skating on before our freedoms are crushed in the pathway of someone else’s idea of a better world.

The Dying Citizen by historian Victor Davis Hansen is an impressive study chronicling the rise of the idea of democracy and concepts of what citizenship entailed as civilizations developed, thrived, and failed. He highlights the various classes that developed in Ancient Greece and Roman times that laid the foundation for our modern world leading to the most precious of documents…the Constitution of the United States. He then proceeds to point out the attacks coming from abroad (globalization) and domestically (leftist progressivism) that assail it. This is a book that should be read by all patriotic Americans who are aghast at the direction we’re heading. I voluntarily reviewed an advance copy of this book from NetGalley. Highly recommend.

I don't agree with everything in this book, but I really appreciate the author's candor and much-needed perspective on how citizenship and discourse is dying in this country I was especially struck by his analysis of class and race in regards to the shift in progressive politics, as he put it, the young leftists give more space for rich black men like Jay-Z than for poor white men, like the coal miners in Appalachia, in their intersectional analysis and policy agendas. It's a very poignant observation and a shift that I think is behind much of the backlash/consequences of MAGA and populism on the right that is undermining their work.