![]() ![]() ![]() A worthy companion to Jane Mayer’s Dark Money (2017), MacLean’s intense and extensive examination of the right-wing’s rise to power is perhaps the best explanation to date of the roots of the political divide that threatens to irrevocably alter American government. ![]() Eventually, Buchanan’s nihilistic zeal attracted multibillionaire Charles Koch, and the union of Buchanan’s fanaticism with Koch’s unlimited finances, claims MacLean, unleashed the deconstructionist forces that now occupy Congress, the White House, and the courts. Board of Education decision and espoused the kind of libertarian and neoconservative rhetoric that is currently enjoying an unprecedented resurgence. Buchanan established a think tank in response to the groundbreaking Brown v. Though now firmly in the hands of Wall Street and inside-the-Beltway billionaires, MacLean argues that the roots of this political philosophy started with a lower-middle-class political economist from the backwaters of Tennessee, Nobel Prize winner James McGill Buchanan. Thus, NPRs Democracy in Chains review came out just five days after the book was published. The buildup to the takedown of democracy as we know it has been a long, dedicated, and patient campaign to, as it were, repeal and replace every facet of public governance. For those who think the Tea Party, Freedom Caucus, and the alt-right are recent constructs, MacLean ( Freedom Is Not Enough, 2006) provides an extensive history lesson that traces the genesis of the right wing back to post-WWII doctrines. ![]()
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