(A column of opinion by Gary Reid, Publisher Emeritus)

Two takes on Hanson’s book ‘The Dying Citizen’

I recently came across Victor Davis Hanson’s book, “The Dying Citizen” in which The New York Times bestselling author of “The Case for Trump” explains the decline and fall of the once-cherished idea of American citizenship.

I’m not sure where the book came from. It just showed up on the lamp stand by my chair. Probably Christine thought I should read something challenging.

Anyway, I have started reading it. Like most things I look at these days, the words seem small. Guess I’ll have to replace my reading glasses with a magnifying glass.

From what I’ve read so far, it seems Hanson attributes today’s political morass to the reduction, bordering on the loss, of America’s middle class.

Just to be sure I was getting the right “take” on what I was reading, I checked a review of the book by The Wall Street Journal and my go-to authority on today’s happenings, Hillsdale College in Michigan. I like that college because it is dedicated to educating without indoctrination – taking no government money.

Here’s how the WSJ review reads: “Human history is full of the stories of peasants, subjects, and tribes. Yet the concept of the “citizen” is historically rare—and was among America’s most valued ideals for over two centuries. But without shock treatment, warns historian Victor Davis Hanson, American citizenship as we have known it may soon vanish.

“In The Dying Citizen, Hanson outlines the historical forces that led to this crisis. The evisceration of the middle class over the last 50 years has made many Americans dependent on the federal government. Open borders have undermined the idea of allegiance to a particular place. Identity politics have eradicated our collective civic sense of self. And a top-heavy administrative state has endangered personal liberty, along with efforts to weaken the Constitution.

“As in the revolutionary years of 1848, 1917, and 1968, 2020 ripped away our complacency about the future. But in the aftermath, we as Americans can rebuild and recover what we have lost. The choice is ours,” Hanson writes.

This book is hardback and is recommended reading for Hillsdale’s free online course, “American Citizenship and Its Decline.”

Here is the part about Hillsdale College: “Mr. Hanson, an accomplished classicist and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution ( Ed. note… at Stanford University in California), is one of the great amalgamators of American political writing. He has a particular gift for bringing together a dizzying array of events, controversies and ideas and making sense of them by advancing a coherent argument that incorporates thousands of years of history… Mr. Hanson hits hard, but I don’t find his analysis unfair or partisan. There is enormous value, moreover, in thinking about toxic political developments not as problems of the moment but as destructive pathologies to which all societies are prone at all times.”

I figured using some of Hanson’s ideas in future columns, then I came across a column written by Rachel Lu, associate editor at Law and Liberty and a contributing writer at American magazine and National Review. She writes on politics, culture and family life. Here is a condensed version of her mostly negative thoughts in the commentary, “The Angry Citizen.”

She first points out the power of historical American citizenship, writing: “It feels good to walk through a foreign train station carrying an American passport. It is the Ferrari of travel documents. Admittedly, some officials might be kinder to Irishmen, Canadians, or the ever-diplomatic Swiss. Nothing impresses, though, like the golden eagle. As a young woman traveling through Central Asia, I loved flashing it at petty officials who would hit me up for bribes. Terror would flash into their eyes, and they would quickly make their excuses and escape, some of them practically running. Bullying random locals is one thing, but you don’t mess with the USA.

“That trick might still work with petty officials in Uzbekistan. Here at home though, American citizenship is in a bad way. This, at any rate, is the argument that Victor Davis Hanson advances in his new work, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization are Destroying the Idea of America. It is a grim book, offering little comfort and few constructive suggestions for conservatives hoping to rebuild after Donald Trump.

Citizenship is ‘dying,’ in Hanson’s view, because it is threatened both from above and from below. In Part I of his book, Hanson argues that Americans are devolving into a kind of “precitizenship,” losing their middle-class dignity as they slide into a state-supported debt peonage. Illegal immigrants increasingly claim the same rights and benefits as citizens, without feeling obliged to assimilate into our culture. Citizens themselves, meanwhile, are identifying more and more with ethnic groups or other “tribes,” instead of taking pride in being Americans.

“Even as we devolve into clans, we are also becoming ‘postcitizens.’ This is the subject of Part II. Here, Hanson rehashes the Mueller investigation, FBI malfeasance, impeachment proceedings, and other unhappy episodes from the Trump years.

Ostensibly, he is making the broader point that unelected bureaucrats and impious progressives are increasingly governing our nations, disregarding the wishes of the people. In the final chapter, on “globalization,” Hanson completes his discourse on “postcitizenship” by bemoaning the cosmopolitan conceit that has persuaded our technocratic elites to throw national interests on the pyre of “global citizenship.”

We hear much in this chapter about the infamous ‘Davos Man,’ and about the hypocrisies of elites who tolerate the oppression of Chinese Uighurs, while taking a firm line against campus micro- aggressions at home.”

The book goes on to expand on her impression of America’s current political state, calling herself an anti-Trump conservative.

She derides “Hanson’s classicist training, and he does draw on that background throughout the book, sprinkling in occasional references to Herodotus or Cleisthenes. Neither history nor political theory feature prominently in this book, however. It is very much a partisan polemic, filled with scathing criticisms of the progressive left, and sturdy apologetics on behalf of the Trump Administration.

“Since the headwinds ultimately prevailed, the book ends up feeling more like a dirge. The mood is embittered and despairing, and very little is offered by way of constructive suggestions.

••• I disagree with Ms. Lu. She denigrates Hanson with the best of the “Hate Orange man” tribe.

I am confident that America was a much more cohesive nation in the days before the Deep State erupted and Big Government attempted to ameliorate normal citizens and that President Trump is attempting to preserve a nation of people who have experienced individual freedom for almost 250 years and don’t want to lose it.

On that point, Lu writes: “Is it realistic to demand a minimal, non-paternalistic state, while also expecting to maintain a middle-class society? If markets are relatively free, and entitlements reduced to a minimum, it seems quite likely that the United States will end up with a fairly sizable class of ‘peasants,’” she wrote.

“Some people, in the spirit of G.K. Chesterton, might see this as acceptable or even desirable.”

It seems that’s exactly where we were headed under preceding Obama-Biden administrations. Hate him or love him, citizens must agree he’s working hard to prevent the collapse of Western civilization.