★Dramatic narrative, concise and insightful narration!
★ Maps and infographics that perfectly visualize American history and political landscape!
★ Includes a wealth of reference material, including historically significant speeches and documents!

Is America still a model of democracy, or is the American Dream fading away? American democracy is more fragile today than ever.
Over the past 20 years, the results of every US presidential election have sparked fierce debate.
Each camp denounces the other as an “enemy of democracy,” and some even try to seize control of the Capitol or assassinate candidates.
American democracy, exploited by all manner of agitators, faces unprecedented challenges.
Will American democracy collapse? If so, what will it leave behind? Or can it be rebuilt?

This book, which can be called 'The Complete Guide to American Democracy,' clearly divides the history of American democracy into six defining moments.
From the visions of the Founding Fathers to the Vietnam War era, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the shocking storming of the Capitol in January 2021, this book dramatically illustrates the complex path of American democracy's origins, development, and crisis through a compelling narrative, concise text, and rich, insightful maps and infographics.
This book will reveal why American democracy is so unstable today and how significant its global implications are.
America's ailing democracy is something we should be concerned about.
Because in that sight we will see doubts and fears about our democracy.
In that sense, America is a close yet distant country.

“Government of the people, by the people, for the people.” On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln defined democracy in these simple yet profound words at Gettysburg.
(…) The fratricidal Civil War arose from the fundamental dilemma of democracy: how to reconcile the South's slave system with the ideal of equality.
The Confederacy, which supported slavery, believed that it did not violate equality, while Northern abolitionists could not accept slavery for moral reasons.
Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address remains as haunting to American democracy as the specter of the Civil War that started it.

--- p.6

“Democracy has never lasted long.
Democracy is wasteful, exhausting and disappearing.
There has never been a democratic country that has not self-destructed.
It is meaningless to say that democracy is less fleeting, less arrogant, less selfish, less ambitious, or less stingy than aristocracy or monarchy.
That is not true, and it has never been true in history.
“Whatever form of government is taken, men have the same passions, and if these passions are not controlled, they produce the same results in fraud, violence, and cruelty.” (John Adams)
--- p.17

America thought of itself as a republic ruled by elites.
The victory over the British monarchy in the Revolutionary War ignited strong nationalist sentiments in the United States, giving it a sense of itself as a special political system and nation.
In a world ruled by kings, the American Republic hoped to be a universal model.
The Founding Fathers believed they had created a special and universal political system, even though it excluded many from the "public good."
The existence of slavery, of course, made them uncomfortable.
(…) In this way, the coexistence of the ideals of the republic and the institution of slavery created a fundamental contradiction.
How could they not grant citizenship to people they knew and encountered every day on the plantation?
--- p.20

Meanwhile, many Northerners settled in the South after the war and tried to teach the local population how to change their economy and society.
The South experienced a period of "Reconstruction" that lasted until 1877 as a period of extreme humiliation and "occupation" by the North.
Confederate supporters created the myth of the Confederacy as a "Lost Cause."
It means that although they lost the war, they pursued a just cause.
The world before the war was a golden age for them.
In their view, slaves could live happily in the South, even with a low legal status, and perhaps even be 'freed'.
Ultimately, the Confederate flag came to symbolize pride in belonging to a South that was perpetually dominated by whites.

--- p.22

But looking back, American universalism at the time is encapsulated in the image that Puritan Governor John Winthrop drew from the Gospel of Matthew.
It is 'A City upon a Hill' that is visible to everyone.
Before the rest of the world could emulate America's political model and republican values, America had to first build a perfect society at home.

--- p.41

Many historians believe that the Spanish-American War of 1898 gave rise to American expansionism.
(…) Whenever there was foreign intervention, leaders promoted the logic of a “just war” created from the war in Cuba.
It was acceptable to use force and violence as long as it could expand democracy throughout the world.
When the United States entered World War I in 1917, President Thomas Woodrow Wilson declared that this would be the last war that would permanently establish democracy in Europe and bring an end to all authoritarian empires.
The exact same logic was used when the United States entered World War II in 1941 and when it intervened in Vietnam and the Middle East.

--- p.46

[Many historians] point to the widespread belief in 'American exceptionalism' and the 'civilizing' mission in American society at the time as the cause.
Indeed, the weight of religion in the American public and political sphere should not be underestimated.
The United States is not a country that claims to be religiously neutral, nor has it transferred the functions of the church to the private sector.
Even today, the President of the United States takes his oath with his hand on the Bible, and ends every speech with the official motto, "In God we trust."
Throughout the 20th century, the majority of American political, union, and corporate leaders sincerely believed that America was called to play a messianic role in the world.
(…) Public opinion was the same.
Many Americans who believed that communism was an anti-Christian evil initially believed that sending American troops to Vietnam to defeat this "absolute evil" was justified.
--- p.49

'America First' can be interpreted in two complementary ways.
First of all, from a historical perspective, the choice of this slogan is not accidental.
This slogan is reminiscent of the conservative and isolationist movements that existed between the two world wars.
(…) Moreover, ‘America First’ is an expression that shows Trump’s geopolitical choice, but it is a strategy that Obama had already conceived.
Both presidents, each in his own way, wanted to break with the belligerent United States after 9/11.
(…) However, their neo-isolationism took on conflicting forms.

--- p.71

President Nixon, who valued hierarchy and fervently opposed communism, disliked this new side of America.
He campaigned in 1968 on the platform of the "silent majority."
In fact, the silent majority is larger than the "leftist" youth we often see on the streets and in the media, burning flags, denouncing the Vietnam War, and ripping their bras.

--- p.84

In 1968, many college students died during protests against the Vietnam War, capitalism, and Nixon's candidacy.
In college, the very meaning of "American exceptionalism" has completely changed.
Contrary to what Presidents Wilson and Roosevelt said, the United States was not much different from the rest of the world as a democracy.
The difference was that extreme violence, domination, and oppression were perpetrated continuously.
College students and some historians have argued that American history can be summarized as a chain of unending violence that began with the massacre of Native Americans upon their arrival in the colonies.
The phenomenon of rereading American history "backwards" in the 1970s was further strengthened by the discovery of the Pentagon Papers.

--- p.87

American society is in great turmoil.
Americans realized that the very system they believed to be perfect could be used for purposes contrary to the ideals of democracy.
Even the constitution enacted by the founding fathers could not prevent corruption and collusion among the ruling class.
(…) President Jimmy Carter symbolized this hope for innovation.
However, the Carter administration soon faced numerous economic challenges.
The United States, hit hard by two oil crises in 1973 and 1979, experienced its greatest economic crisis since the 1930s.
(…) With so much tension, President Carter lost his way, and on July 15, 1979, he gave a disastrous televised speech that was called the “anxiety speech.”

--- p.92

Like many presidential candidates, Reagan pledged that if elected, he would restore the "real" America that the Founding Fathers envisioned.
(…) As an actor, he has a knack for re-expressing America's "timeless" principles with a simple yet sophisticated quality.
For example, he called the Soviet Union the "evil empire," inspired by the Star Wars series.
(…) In 1984, Americans saw an ad that said, “It’s Morning Again in America,” and elected Reagan as president again.
During his presidency, Reagan rolled back welfare policies in the name of democracy and the federalism established by the Founding Fathers.
(…) He had already announced his course in his inaugural speech in January 1981.
“In this current crisis, the federal government is not the solution to our problems.
“The federal government itself is the problem.”
--- p.93

George W., who was shocked when he heard the news that the World Trade Center had been attacked.
Bush's appearance is well known.
But he was transformed into a war commander the very next day.
(…) Like many other conservatives, he interpreted the 9/11 attacks in messianic terms.
President Bush believed that the 9/11 attacks were not only an attack on American democracy, but also an attack by Islamic terrorists targeting Christians.
And the United States, the "civilization of good," claimed that it had a mission to fully establish democracy on other continents.
Like the Reagan years, the Bush administration's geopolitical perspective was expressed in dichotomous, religiously charged terms.

--- p.110

It is also important to consider the "boomerang effect" that wars waged abroad have on democracy.
Since December 7, 1941, the United States has continued its overseas campaigns, mobilizing millions of conscripts and professional soldiers.
Like Europe between the two world wars, American society and politics have been, one might even say, "barbarized" over the past two decades by the return of soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq.
There are currently 2 million active-duty and reserve military personnel and 16 million retired military personnel living in the United States.
These 18 million soldiers who served or completed their service for their country were reintegrated into their families and economic networks.
They have also made significant inroads into the public sphere.
This has also affected democracy, with American politics experiencing a period of extraordinary violence over the past two decades.

--- p.116

Since the early 21st century, many Americans have viewed the United States as a nation at war.
Many people believe that the war is happening not only outside our borders but also on American soil.
(…) The impact of this militarization was particularly great in the South, Midwest, and West, where the military and military economy were established.
Montana, which has many military bases, is a representative example.
The population is predominantly white, and for the past two decades, political debate has been polarized by fears of immigration, Islam, and the end of the world.
Veterans from Montana have contributed significantly to this shift in political debate.
Because their only foreign experience is confined to the battlefields of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, they return home believing the world outside the United States is marked by extreme violence and a fundamental hostility to American democratic values.
So it's not surprising that Montana voters in 2016 supported Trump's neo-isolationist policies.

--- p.119