How Democracies Die

 I have been attending a class every other week at the university on war and peace. I didn't sign up nor pay for the class but I got an email saying the general public was welcome. Initially I wanted to go in order to help myself process the immigrant crisis in our state. Even in Winona three Hmong employees were hauled away. Last week we discussed the situation in Iran and Gaza. One of the people in the group was a professor of physics. He clearly explained how Uranium 235 can be enriched to Uranium 238. The United States enriched Uranium with long underground tunnels in Tennessee. The Uranium is propelled through the pipe slowly and the enriched Uranium gets distilled by going through the long tunnels many times and floating to the top of the pipe. The other way to enrich Uranium is through specially made centrifuges which are hard to come by. Another person in the class said that anytime a country sends that many aircraft carriers and battle ships to an area war is surely to follow. He was right. Earlier in the class a person recommended the book written by Steven Livitsky and Daniel Ziblatt called How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future. My audio book was 8.5 hours long. These two authors have spent several decades studying the governments around the world and doing research on authoritarianism. They have studied Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Chile, Hungary, Turkey and Russia.  Years ago democracies died with a military coup. This is not the case in modern times. Democracies die a slow death. Law and the constitution is attacked. Voting rights are attacked. Legitimacy of elections are attacked. Legitimacy of political opponents are attacked. Violence is tolerated or encouraged. Civil liberties are attacked. In the years before and after the Civil War, mutual toleration was gone. Mutual toleration is the belief that although you disagree with your political opponents are decent, patriotic, and law-abiding citizens. These days it feels like some of us have lost mutual toleration. The arguments made in this book are convincing and depressing. It was published in January, 2018.