Book Review: Democracy in Chains
MacLean, Nancy. Democracy in chains: the deep history of the radical right’s stealth plan for America. Viking, [2017].
Last week, I learned that both anti-immigration activist Stephen Miller and white nationalist Richard Spencer were students at Duke in 2006 when the lacrosse scandal consumed our town and the nation. At the time, Stephen Miller was an undergraduate studying political science and a columnist for The Chronicle. A decade after graduation, Miller had an office in the Trump White House advising the president on immigration issues.
White supremacist Richard Spencer was a PhD student in history at Duke in 2006, but he dropped out to become an editor of the American Conservative, where he was later fired for his extreme views. Credited for creating the term alt-right, Spencer was the leader of a protest in Charlottesville, VA last month that resulted in a violent confrontation.
Stephen Miller and Richard Spencer express views that garner media attention but far more threatening are the secret plans by more powerful players on the radical right. In her new book, Democracy in Chains, Duke history and public policy faculty member Nancy MacLean presents the story of the radical right and their well-planned and financed stealth campaign to rewrite democracy in America by concentrating economic and political power in the hands of a few.
Prof MacLean begins her story in the mid-1950’s at the University of Chicago and later at the University of Virginia and George Mason where economist James Buchanan and other like-minded intellectuals set out to free markets from collective action and government interference. These early libertarians argue that private markets acting in their own self-interest allocate goods and services most efficiently, and that public officials, who also operate with self-interested motives, cannot be trusted to act for the public good. Buchanan advocates for a smaller role for government, lower taxes and government spending, curtailing of worker rights, fewer environmental protections and privatizing public resources. In 1986, Buchanan wins a Nobel Prize in Economics for his groundbreaking work, but he and his associates make little headway in implementing his vision.
In the 1990’s, the Koch brothers and other multibillionaires begin financing a covert strategy to implement Buchanan’s groundbreaking ideas for radical and permanent change, replacing majority rule with pure capitalism. After 2008, the Koch team engineers a hostile takeover of the Republican party. Vice President Mike Pence sympathizes with their view. Libertarian leaders seek liberty, “The liberty to concentrate vast wealth, so as to deny elementary fairness and freedom to the many.” Recommended
Also available as an audiobook on OverDrive and as an eBook on OverDrive.
© Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.