Modern Democracy
The History and Legacy of the World’s Democratic Institutions Since the American Revolution
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Narrated by:
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Jim D. Johnston
About this listen
In today’s modern world, every political regime - even the most authoritarian or repressive - describes itself as democracy or a democratic people’s republic. The concept of rule by the people and on behalf of the people has come to be accepted as the norm. Very few would overtly espouse the cause of dictatorship, absolute monarchy, or oligarchy as the most desirable political system upon which to base the government of any country.
It is also generally accepted that democracy, as a political ideology, began in Greece - specifically in Athens - in the seventh century BCE and reached its zenith in the fifth century under the leadership of Pericles. Dating an exact starting point is impossible, but at the beginning of the seventh century BCE, Solon inaugurated a series of reforms that began the movement away from rule by individuals, or tyrants, and by the end of that century, the reforms of Cleisthenes provided the basis of the Athenian democratic system that culminated in the radical institutions introduced by Ephialtes and Pericles in the fifth century. The result was the first, and possibly only, truly participative democratic state.
At the same time, the ancients would not have recognized or accepted any of today’s modern versions of democracy as being truly “democratic”. A rejection of dictatorships masquerading as democracies would be understandable, but the ancients would have been equally scathing of Western-style representative democracies that they would undoubtedly have seen as anti-democratic. The key to democracy, as far as the Greeks and Romans were concerned, was active participation by the citizen body in all political aspects of life.
While the French Revolution tried and ultimately failed to bring about an almost fully democratic system, the fledgling United States of America managed to bring about one of the most enduring forms of democratic government in the 1780s.
The constitution of the United States was not the first written expression of the democratic ideal, but it certainly was the most perfect in the context of the times. In the entire history of the British Empire, only two territories would attempt a unilateral declaration of independence. The first was the United States, and the second, 189 years later, was the rebel territory of Southern Rhodesia in the constellation of British African territories. The sheer audacity, in 1776, of a subject territory of the British Crown declaring itself independent sent shock waves through the imperial establishment, setting into motion a reevaluation of British overseas policy and beginning the boldest experiment in democracy to date.
The seeds of the American Revolution could be found in the fundamental distrust of a distant government held by a local population of an independent character confronting a continent almost infinite in its scope. The cusp upon which this embryonic republic stood represented the first authentic opportunity to date for a European people - egalitarian in outlook and separated from the stifling social conventions of Europe - to redefine the rights of man, according to what they believed was enshrined in the spirit of the Magna Carta.
Therefore, before the mechanics of government and administration could begin to be constructed, a declaration of rights was deemed essential as the basis of any future political blueprint to guarantee each citizen, free and included, a list of protections and immunities from their own government. This became the basic template for the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the constitution of the United States of America, drafted to appease the anti-federalists suspicious of a return to imperial rule by the back door.
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Excellent review of Slavery and the Constitution
- By Amazon Customer on 01-01-19
By: Sean Wilentz
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The Second Founding
- How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution
- By: Eric Foner
- Narrated by: Donald Corren
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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From the Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar, a timely history of the constitutional changes that built equality into the nation's foundation and how those guarantees have been shaken over time.
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Excellent book - problematic narrator
- By Jennifer on 10-01-19
By: Eric Foner
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The Problem with Lincoln
- By: Thomas J. DiLorenzo
- Narrated by: John McLain
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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So many thousands of books deifying Abraham Lincoln have been published that it is nearly impossible for the average citizen to learn much of anything that is truthful about Lincoln’s presidency. You’ll learn that the real reason why Lincoln launched an invasion of his own country (he never admitted that secession was legal or legitimate) was to destroy the voluntary union of the founders and replace it with a coerced union held together by violence and threats of violence, much more like the old Soviet Union than the original American union.
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Not sure about this guy
- By Luis Renta on 07-26-20
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The Crooked Path to Abolition
- Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution
- By: James Oakes
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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An award-winning scholar uncovers the guiding principles of Lincoln's antislavery strategies.
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Lincoln’s Transformation
- By A View from Greensboro on 12-04-22
By: James Oakes
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Confederate Reckoning
- Power and Politics in the Civil War South
- By: Stephanie McCurry
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of the Confederate States of America, the proslavery, antidemocratic nation created by white Southern slaveholders to protect their property, has been told many times in heroic and martial narratives. Now, however, Stephanie McCurry tells a very different tale of the Confederate experience. Confederate Reckoning is the startling story of this epic political battle in which women and slaves helped to decide the fate of the Confederacy and the outcome of the Civil War.
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Good view of the confederate inner workings.
- By Amazonian on 08-10-22
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Break It Up
- Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America's Imperfect Union
- By: Richard Kreitner
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The novel and fiery thesis of Break It Up is simple: the United States has never lived up to its name - and never will. The disunionist impulse may have found its greatest expression in the Civil War, but as Break It Up shows, the seduction of secession wasn't limited to the South or the 19th century. With a scholar's command and a journalist's curiosity, Kreitner takes readers on a revolutionary journey through American history, revealing the power and persistence of disunion movements in every era and region.
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Completely Partisan
- By Patrick Tobin on 11-06-22
By: Richard Kreitner
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Four Threats
- The Recurring Crises of American Democracy
- By: Suzanne Mettler, Robert C. Lieberman
- Narrated by: Andrea Gallo
- Length: 13 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Four Threats, Lieberman and Mettler explore five historical episodes when democracy in the United States was under siege: the 1790s, the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Depression, and Watergate. These episodes risked profound, even fatal, damage to the American democratic experiment, and on occasion antidemocratic forces have prevailed. From this history, four distinct characteristics of democratic disruption emerge. Political polarization, racism and nativism, economic inequality, and excessive executive power...have threatened the survival of the republic.
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Very informative
- By Angela Fobbs on 12-31-20
By: Suzanne Mettler, and others
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Fears of a Setting Sun
- The Disillusionment of America's Founders
- By: Dennis C. Rasmussen
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Americans seldom deify their Founding Fathers any longer, but they do still tend to venerate the Constitution and the republican government that the founders created. Strikingly, the founders themselves were far less confident in what they had wrought, particularly by the end of their lives. In fact, most of them - including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson - came to deem America's constitutional experiment an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation.
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A different perspective on the founders
- By kpa on 03-04-24
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The Words That Made Us
- America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840
- By: Akhil Reed Amar
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 27 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Words That Made Us, Akhil Reed Amar unites history and law in a vivid narrative of the biggest constitutional questions early Americans confronted, and he expertly assesses the answers they offered. His account of the document's origins and consolidation is a guide for anyone seeking to properly understand America's Constitution today.
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And the words that made Us
- By Anonymous User on 10-17-22
By: Akhil Reed Amar
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A New World Begins
- The History of the French Revolution
- By: Jeremy D. Popkin
- Narrated by: Pete Cross, Jeremy D. Popkin
- Length: 21 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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The principles of the French Revolution remain the only possible basis for a just society - even if, after more than 200 years, they are more contested than ever before. In A New World Begins, Jeremy D. Popkin offers a riveting account of the revolution that puts the listener in the thick of the debates and the violence that led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a new society.
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Narration
- By Kindle Customer on 04-26-22
By: Jeremy D. Popkin
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The American Revolution
- A History [Modern Library Chronicles]
- By: Gordon S. Wood
- Narrated by: Jack Garrett
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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The American Revolution signalled a great change in the course of world history and progress. From this colonial revolt sprouted ideals of liberty and democracy, and all the aspirations and ambitions of a new people. In this work, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon S. Wood discusses the character and consequences of the revolution, grounding the events and ideas that shaped the American consciousness.
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The foremost scholar on the subject
- By Robert on 08-20-05
By: Gordon S. Wood
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The Broken Constitution
- Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America
- By: Noah Feldman
- Narrated by: Noah Feldman
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Abraham Lincoln is justly revered for his brilliance, compassion, humor, and rededication of the United States to achieving liberty and justice for all. He led the nation into a bloody civil war to uphold the system of government established by the US Constitution - a system he regarded as the “last best hope of mankind”. But how did Lincoln understand the Constitution?
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Takes you to Lincoln’s time for a new understanding
- By Jason Cecil on 12-22-21
By: Noah Feldman
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How the South Won the Civil War
- Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America
- By: Heather Cox Richardson
- Narrated by: Heather Cox Richardson
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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While the North prevailed in the Civil War, ending slavery and giving the country a "new birth of freedom," Heather Cox Richardson argues in this provocative work that democracy's blood-soaked victory was ephemeral. The system that had sustained the defeated South moved westward and there established a foothold. It was a natural fit. Settlers from the East had for decades been pushing into the West, where the seizure of Mexican lands at the end of the Mexican-American War and treatment of Native Americans cemented racial hierarchies....
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Disappointing book that wasted such potential.
- By Amazon Customer on 08-07-21
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American Dialogue
- The Founders and Us
- By: Joseph J. Ellis
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of history is a ceaseless conversation between past and present, and in American Dialogue, Joseph J. Ellis focuses the conversation on the often-asked question "What would the Founding Fathers think?" He examines four of our most seminal historical figures through the prism of particular topics, using the perspective of the present to shed light on their views and, in turn, to make clear how their now centuries-old ideas illuminate the disturbing impasse of today's political conflicts.
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A fine work, even with the editorializing
- By Casey Kerrick on 11-24-18
By: Joseph J. Ellis