Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy

Jonah Goldberg

Apr 2018 · Sold by Forum Books

About this ebook

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An urgent argument that America and other democracies are in peril because they have lost the will to defend the values and institutions that sustain freedom and prosperity.
 
“Epic and debate-shifting.”—David Brooks, New York Times
 
Only once in the last 250,000 years have humans stumbled upon a way to lift ourselves out of the endless cycle of poverty, hunger, and war that defines most of history. If democracy, individualism, and the free market were humankind’s destiny, they should have appeared and taken hold a bit earlier in the evolutionary record. The emergence of freedom and prosperity was nothing short of a miracle.
 
As Americans we are doubly blessed, because the radical ideas that made the miracle possible were written not just into the Constitution but in our hearts, laying the groundwork for our uniquely prosperous society. Those ideas are:
 
• Our rights come from God, not from the government. 

• The government belongs to us; we do not belong to it. 

• The individual is sovereign. We are all captains of our own souls, not bound by the circumstances of our birth. 

• The fruits of our labors belong to us.

 
In the last few decades, these political virtues have been turned into vices. As we are increasingly taught to view our traditions as a system of oppression, exploitation, and privilege, the principles of liberty and the rule of law are under attack from left and right. For the West to survive, we must renew our sense of gratitude for what our civilization has given us and rediscover the ideals and habits of the heart that led us out of the bloody muck of the past—or back to the muck we will go.

Ratings and reviews

Being an avid fan of Mr. Goldberg, I had a pretty good idea of the substantive material of this book long before reading it. If it were a movie, that knowledge would have ruined the first time watching it, but due to his writing style and his brilliant mind, reading the book was still one of the best things I have done. It is funny, entertaining and most of all informative. All three of his books are great treasures.

Perhaps the best book I've read. Jonah explores history to write a sound discussion of how liberal democracy came to be, and constructs an argument for why and how the forces of human nature such as tribalism as expressed in identity politics and nationalism are constantly telling us to tear down the system that advanced human progress so far.

Terrible book extremely flawed. Not worth the money.

About the author

Jonah Goldberg holds the Cliff Asness Chair in Applied Liberty at the American Enterprise Institute. He is a Los Angeles Times columnist and member of the “Fox News All-Stars,” and he appears regularly on NPR’s Morning Edition. In 2019 Goldberg stepped down as a senior editor at National Review after twenty-one years at the magazine.