Dismantling Democracy: The forty-year attack on government, ....and the long game for the common good - Paperback

by Donald Cohen (Author)

Since the 1970s a constellation of aligned conservative institutions, grassroots issue groups, academics, intellectuals, industry leaders, and politicians has been enormously successful at shifting fundamental attitudes toward government and its basic role in American society. These groups have focused on winning the hearts and minds of the people not with detailed policy prescriptions but with a set of beliefs and conventional wisdom, a vaguely defined national philosophy that protects the privileges of the wealthy and powerful. There wasn't one strategy or one secret plan but rather multiple strands, sometimes parallel and sometimes in competition, that in concert have amounted to an effective attack on government. Part I of the paper is an attempt at an analysis of these strategic directions in order to expose their essential elements. Part II describes ten strategies to build a movement and a nation rooted in protecting and advancing the common good. Dismantling Democracy is not about the next election. It is not about policy or specific elements of a progressive agenda. It is a call for serious inquiry, discussion and debate by those who believe in democracy and the common good.

Author Biography

Donald Cohen is the founder and executive director of In the Public Interest (ITPI, ) a national strategy center committed to advancing democracy, shared prosperity and the common good. He is a founding board member of the Partnership for Working Families. He is the former political director of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, AFL-CIO. He is the founder and former executive director of the Center on Policy Initiatives, a San Diego-based think tank and policy organization. His opinion pieces and articles have appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, the Los Angeles Times, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The New York Daily News, The New Republic, The American Prospect, The Nation and other online and print outlets