Mehrsa's Reviews > How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future

This is the rare book where I liked their solutions section better than their descriptive section. At the end, they fight against those who say that the left needs to let go of its embrace of identity culture (i.e. embrace of multiculturalism). They say that would be a huge mistake and I agree. Basically, this book shows how other democracies aboard have fallen into autocracy (spoiler: there are more similarities between us and them than differences).

My one critique (or maybe it's just a question) is their insistence on preserving (or resurrecting) the role of gate-keepers. This is a tempting solution--bring back the party bosses and the smoke rooms and the strong electorate college protections that kept out the crazies in the past (like Ford and Lindberg and Wallace). They certainly failed to keep out Trump. But I am not sure we need more gatekeepers. Hillary did win the popular vote. Seems we might just have a half-way system that is neither Populist nor elitist but the worst of both worlds. In any case, it's a short and interesting read.