Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America

Nancy MacLean

Jun 2017 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

Winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Finalist for the National Book Award
The Nation's "Most Valuable Book"

“[A] vibrant intellectual history of the radical right.”—The Atlantic

“This sixty-year campaign to make libertarianism mainstream and eventually take the government itself is at the heart of Democracy in Chains. . . . If you're worried about what all this means for America's future, you should be.”—NPR

An explosive exposé of the right’s relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, stop action on climate change, and alter the Constitution.

*Now Updated With A New Preface*

Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect—the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan—and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority.

In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, Nancy MacLean shows how Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite’s power in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. In response to the widening of American democracy, he developed a brilliant, if diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us.

Corporate donors and their right-wing foundations were only too eager to support Buchanan’s work in teaching others how to divide America into “makers” and “takers.” And when a multibillionaire on a messianic mission to rewrite the social contract of the modern world, Charles Koch, discovered Buchanan, he created a vast, relentless, and multi-armed machine to carry out Buchanan’s strategy.

Without Buchanan's ideas and Koch's money, the libertarian right would not have succeeded in its stealth takeover of the Republican Party as a delivery mechanism. Now, with Mike Pence as Vice President, the cause has a longtime loyalist in the White House, not to mention a phalanx of Republicans in the House, the Senate, a majority of state governments, and the courts, all carrying out the plan. That plan includes harsher laws to undermine unions, privatizing everything from schools to health care and Social Security, and keeping as many of us as possible from voting. Based on ten years of unique research, Democracy in Chains tells a chilling story of right-wing academics and big money run amok. This revelatory work of scholarship is also a call to arms to protect the achievements of twentieth-century American self-government.

Ratings and reviews

True and watch the paid trolls give low ratings. Also part of Putins plan since he disrespects the country and hoards most money for himself in his own country while many are poor. He stated himself he misses the old soviet ussr days. Also chaotic shootingsoccured in this country whenever he didnt get his way like with sanctions. Trump is proving to be his puppet and they are both corrupt. Also kushners support rfids. Ivankas desperate to be first female president even though shes a joke. Many came to this country to escape communism yet those wicked tyrants dont care and will one day reap what they sow. Those dictators and dictator wannabe sold their souls they only worship themselves,greed and lust. Fools worship them.

Fear mongering for political advantage. The appitemy of fake information. Of course no Billionares support radical left wing causes which are at the detriment of the country.

Well u had suspected the southern states because of their altering the perceptions of civil war outcomes as if sore losers or could not admit they were wrong ! well I guess I was wrong in that this plan is way worse than I ever could have imagined.can't wait till I get to read the resr. I am sorry but I am the role care giver for my disabled adult child and have no income of my own. So thank you for letting my read this part anyway. and ps I always vote Democratic and have mailed in my ballot last week .i would guess this 2022 and the2024 are pivotal elections for our nation and our states. Thank You Sincerley, Cathy &Emily H.

About the author

Nancy MacLean is the award-winning author of Behind the Mask of Chivalry  (a New York Times "noteworthy" book of the year) and Freedom is Not Enough, which was called by the Chicago Tribune “contemporary history at its best.” The William Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University, she lives in Durham, North Carolina.