Hitler looked to America’s Indigenous reservations as a way to rid a country of “unwanted” people. He called the Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews whom he intended to massacre “Indians.”[4]

The southern strategy marked the switch of the parties’ positions over the issue of race. Johnson knew what that meant: that the nation’s move toward equality would provide a weapon for a certain kind of politician to rise to power. In a hotel in Tennessee after a day spent seeing racial slurs scrawled on signs and an evening of bourbon, Johnson ex

In 1791, Black mathematician and naturalist Benjamin Banneker directly called out then–secretary of state Thomas Jefferson for praising the “proper ideas of the great valuation of liberty, and the free possession of those blessings to which you were entitled by nature,” while at the same time “detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of m

Authoritarians rise when economic, social, political, or religious change makes members of a formerly powerful group feel as if they have been left behind. Their frustration makes them vulnerable to leaders who promise to make them dominant again. A strongman downplays the real conditions that have created their problems and tells them that the onl

The next year, on September 29, 1987, Reagan attached a signing statement to a debt bill, declaring his right to interpret it as he wished, saying the president could not be forced “to follow the orders of a subordinate.” While few people paid attention to it, this statement was a shot across the bow of American democracy. It advanced the theory of

Days after the first major leak from WikiLeaks, Trump openly invited Russia to hack the U.S. secretary of state’s computer system, which he insisted had important information on it: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said.[5] Reporters were shocked at a political candidate openly calling

More often than not, those articulating the nation’s true principles have been marginalized Americans who demanded the nation honor its founding promises. Their struggles have constantly renewed the country’s dedication to the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence. Their fight for equality reveals the true nature of American dem

In 1858, rising politician Abraham Lincoln told an audience: “I ask you in all soberness, if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed and endorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform this Government into a government of some other form.

If Americans had not been totally sold on the New Deal government in the 1930s, its victory in World War II seemed to confirm that FDR’s approach to governance was right. By 1945, most Republicans joined with Democrats to embrace a government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and promoted investment in infrastructure.