The Last Time Democracy Almost Died (Jill Lepore)
With the rise of dictatorships across Europe and Asia in the past quarter-century, the current impeachment and then acquittal of President Donald Trump, fear, anger, and despair about the present state of America and its future as a democracy has become a topic of discussion. Recent books entitled How Democracies Die and The People Vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is In Danger & How To Save It point to the angst that is in the air about the present and future of democracy in the U.S.
Historian Jill Lepore looks to the 1930s when the U.S. was mired in the Great Depression and totalitarianism was on the march in Benito Mussolini’s Italy and Adolph Hitler’s Germany. In the U.S., anti-immigration sentiment, lynchings of blacks, and antisemitism rose dramatically in these years as authoritarian governments toppled democracies internationally.
As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal took hold of the country, Lepore argues that Americans engaged in sustained discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of democratic government and daily democratic practices. And many public schools were involved in those civic discussions. I have excerpted part of the article dealing with one Midwestern school district’s efforts.
Jill Lepore contributes to The New Yorker. She is a professor of history at Harvard University. Her latest book is “These Truths: A History of the United States.” The entire article appeared in The New Yorker.
It’s a paradox of democracy that the best way to defend it is to attack it, to ask CONTINUE READING: The Last Time Democracy Almost Died (Jill Lepore) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice