Rebellion: How Antiliberalism is Tearing America Apart — Again, by Robert Kagan.

 

The next time someone asks me to ‘explain America’ — how can Trump be so popular; why is the country so politically polarised; is democracy in peril – – I will hand them this book. The answer is not the absence of mandatory voting, or the electoral college; it is not social media, the economic system or foreign wars. The political divisions of America of today are rooted in the liberal democracy created in the 18th Century. Individual rights did not come from God, or the monarch, not even from the people. They were, “natural rights,” as Locke pronounced.

 

The Founding Fathers fought about the limited role of government, about the role of religion. It was a radical experiment — still being tested 250 years later.

 

— Ray