Democracy in Chains

The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America

By: Nancy MacLean

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne

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.

Excellent book, however the narration was UNBEARABLE.

I hate to leave a review for this book with any negativity, but I feel compelled to warn listeners. This book is stunning, illuminating, profound. The narrator, who is probably a lovely person, is unfortunately flat, robotic, and unlistenable. Honestly, it’s as if I have asked Siri to read it. One of the worst narrators I’ve listened to (sorry to her). I’m not abandoning it. I have a couple hours left. The book is great, but I would recommend it in print if this is never recorded by another voice actor.

The historical context for "Dark Money"

Would you consider the audio edition of Democracy in Chains to be better than the print version?

Yes...because most most of us won't finish reading the book whereas the reader is good enough to keep us engaged while we're driving the car and listening.

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

That I learned about the intellectual source for the Kochs, Mercers and fellow billionaires takeover of the US government in 2016. And It's not Ayn Rand or Horatio Alger. It's John C. Calhoun from the early 19th century and a unknown academic who formulated a strategy to obstruct integration in the 1950s. The conspiratorial stealth thesis sounds nutty until you listen to it and keep in mind that the relentless greed of the very wealthy is a bottomless tar pit for the rest of us.

Which character – as performed by Bernadette Dunne – was your favorite?

Reader doesn't annoy or distract with character voicing.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The fact that a county in Virginia closed public schools for five years (1959-1964) to avoid integrating schools resulting in no schools for black students.

Any additional comments?

Advice to the listener...Don't be afraid to learn the truth...but don't expect it to set you free.

Read this book—you decide....

This book reads like a historical thriller with real ties to the present. If you have ever wondered just who the Koch brothers are and what their goals are....this is an interesting place to start. Obviously it is one side of the story...but it is an important side of the story.

Long view of right wing approach/success

thoughtful explication of right-wing priorities and methods supported my references to historical documents and relatively lesser-known but very important participants. Well worth the listen and likely read.

Democracy

A very good presentation, great review of historical facts. I would recommend this book for purchase.