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Demagogue: The Fight to Save Democracy from Its Worst Enemies

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Before he became world famous for putting forth his theory of a "clash of civilisations", the political scientist Samuel Huntington was known for his work on the processes of democratisation. In his 1991 book The Third Wave, Huntington traced the expansion of democratic freedoms in Europe after the upheavals of 1848 through their demise at the hands of fascist dictators in the 1930s, the post-Second World War wave of democratisation in the Third World that ended in the brutal African and Latin American dictatorships of the 1960s and 1970s and, finally, a third wave that reached its height at the end of the Cold War.

In his new book, Michael Signer - a fellow at the Center for American Progress, political scientist, lawyer and current candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia - argues that Huntington's third wave is giving way to a tide of strongmen who take advantage of democratic elections to consolidate their own power.

Signer is not alone in worrying that the spread of democracy, if not properly conceived, is potentially dangerous. The Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria's 2003 book, The Future of Freedom, examined the dilemma posed by "illiberal democracies", which go through the motions of holding elections but do not govern by liberal, constitutional principles; the Yale law professor Amy Chua's 2003 book, World on Fire, warned that rapid democratisation in socioeconomically polarised societies could encourage the rise of tyrants who channel popular anger toward economically dominant minority groups, such as whites in Zimbabwe or Bolivia; more recently, the Stanford University political scientist Larry Diamond wrote of a "democratic recession". As nascent democracies are cannibalised by corrupt, predatory governments, Diamond argues, they fail to become anything more than states that happen to allow citizens to vote. Signer's book continues in the same vein, but focuses on the peril of instances where a single, popular individual comes to power through democratic means and uses that power to subvert democracy.

Demagogue is, at its core, a meditation on an inherent danger: "As democracy expands," Signer writes, "it increases the potential for its own destruction." Framing his argument around the ancient Greek historian Polybius's cycle of regimes - the notion that monarchy will always descend into tyranny, aristocracy will lead to oligarchy, and that pure democracy will decay into "government of violence and the strong hand" - Signer's book revisits a conundrum that has occupied the great political theorists from Plato, who saw his mentor Socrates sentenced to death by the mob, to Hannah Arendt, who watched as her professor and lover Martin Heidegger was seduced by Nazism.

Signer sets out four criteria that define the demagogue: he is a leader who presents himself as a common man, depends on charisma and a deep emotional connection with the people, exploits his own popularity to satisfy his political ambitions and, finally and most crucially, having achieved power, openly challenges or breaks accepted norms and laws in order to implement his goals.



Signer's cast of demagogues ranges from the ancient to the contemporary. It includes the Athenian general Cleon, who used oratory and public appeals to topple the respected but elitist elder statesman Pericles; Hitler, who took advantage of the Weimar Republic's democratic system and widespread popular resentment of the Versailles Treaty to rise to power; and the Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr, who exploited popular outrage at the US occupation, the chaos wrought by the de-Baathification order and Shiites' lust for political power to make himself the leader of a popular insurrection. The world today is full of figures who meet Signer's criteria for demagoguery: Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Russia's Vladimir Putin and Hizbollah's Hassan Nasrallah - who leads an organisation that is arguably stronger and more popular than the Lebanese state - are just a few he cites. And there are other potential demagogues lurking, such as Evo Morales in Bolivia, whose heavy-handed populism is raising eyebrows, and Jacob Zuma, almost certain to become South Africa's next president, who some critics fear will take an imperfect liberal democracy and turn it into yet another corrupt African kleptocracy.

Signer looks to the United States as the model of democratic resiliency - a place that has at times flirted with demagoguery without ever succumbing. Among these moments of near unravelling were the election of the rough frontier general-turned-president, Andrew Jackson - during whose inauguration the "unkempt masses" climbed in and out of White House windows - and the rise of the Louisiana governor and senator, Huey Long, who turned his state into a personal fiefdom and intended to challenge Franklin Roosevelt for the presidency in 1936 but instead fell to an assassin's bullet. George W Bush, whom the anti-war left frequently painted as a power-hungry tyrant trampling the constitution, does not make Signer's list - after all, no matter how hard he tried to distance himself from his blue-blooded roots, he was not a man of the people and never had the oratorical talent or charisma to develop an enthusiastic mass following. Not every populist leader is a demagogue - and not every leader who abridges freedoms and breaks the rules does so in a demagogic manner.

Political scientists specialising in democratic development have been arguing for decades about the necessary conditions for democracy. In the 1960s adherents of "modernisation theory" insisted that economic development was a necessary precondition for democratic government because economic growth begets liberal values; a younger but already influential Huntington focused instead on the necessity of building strong, stable institutions. Recent critics, such as Zakaria and Chua, have warned of the dangers of crash-course democracy, which gives rise to illiberal governments or demagogues who tap into the majority's resentment of market-dominant minority groups - fertile ground for the age-old democratic dilemma Signer so fears.

The leading contemporary scholars of democracy promotion, Thomas Carothers and Larry Diamond, have both recognised that existing democracy-promotion programmes cannot easily change deeper societal problems, such as the values and expectations of citizens. But both Carothers and Diamond reject the notion that a certain set of social norms and values must be in place before democratisation can take root. In a 2007 essay called "The `Sequencing' Fallacy", Carothers attacked modernisation theorists as well as the likes of Chua and Zakaria for insisting that an efficient state is a precondition for democracy. This, he argues, is an excuse for autocracy, based on the false premise that autocrats will usher in the rule of law and other preconditions for democracy.

More recent proponents of modernisation include Michael Mandelbaum, who argued in his 2007 book Democracy's Good Name that - due to free-market reforms - democracy was continuing to flourish abroad despite failed US efforts to promote it. Owning private property, according to Mandelbaum, itself constitutes a form of liberty and participation in a market economy fosters both trust and compromise - prerequisites for a liberal democratic state. Similarly, Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, the authors of Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy, contend that economic development inevitably gives rise to cultural shifts. Whereas their parents were forced to focus on feeding the family, the younger generation in many poor countries is no longer focused on survival. Consequently, they are abandoning traditional and religious value systems, opting instead for a more secular outlook that places a higher premium on individual rights and self-expression.

These individualist values are remarkably similar to what Signer calls a "constitutional conscience", a public attitude towards governance that he sees as the chief safeguard against the rise of demagogues - although he does not argue that markets and economic growth are prerequisites for such an attitude. Channelling de Tocqueville and Arendt, Signer envisions "a living culture of political values among ordinary people" that makes citizens responsible for democracy's success and encourages them to challenge any government abuse of authority. Without these values to nurture a liberal state, democracy is "like a body without a soul," writes Signer.

By calling for the careful nurturing of constitutional values, Signer is trying to bridge the divide between development-focused modernisation theorists, idealistic democracy promoters and democratic pessimists. He does not believe the market will create these values on its own, he warns that democracy promotion without a constitutional component will fall flat and, despite his fear of demagogues, believes that democracy - fortified with constitutionalism - can escape Chua and Zakaria's illiberal trap.

Signer's prescriptions include: expanding civic education; providing election training; encouraging free markets; and tailoring constitutional norms to different cultural and religious value systems rather than merely imposing western models. He also calls for an increased civilian role in humanitarian missions and democracy-promotion efforts, which now rely heavily on the military. Although these proposals are broad and abstract, his critique of US policy in Iraq offers a more concrete sense of what genuine constitutionalism would require.

There the US reconstruction effort failed because it sought to impose a constitution on Iraqis rather than encouraging them to develop one of their own. As Diamond, who was sent to supervise democracy-promotion programmes in 2004, later wrote: "They simply imposed a transition plan on the Iraqi people and political class, rather than engaging in an open, broad-based dialogue." One prominent Iraqi miffed by the US approach was Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, a widely respected Shiite religious leader whose own writings dealt with the question of political legitimacy. Feeling excluded from the transition process and the drafting of the new constitution, Sistani's followers lost faith in the process, paving the way for Muqtada al Sadr's rise. As Signer puts it, "if we want the citizens of the world to adopt and support constitutionalism, we have to offer them a light to follow on an often dark path instead of a whip to drive them forward".

But this approach would come at a cost to American grand strategy as it has been practised in recent years. If Washington begins to view the spread of democratic values - and not just institution building, elections or economic development - as the real linchpin of democracy promotion, then America's own integrity and consistency in its application of those values becomes a more central issue. Maintaining close ties with blatantly non-democratic regimes in Egypt and Saudi Arabia while touting democratisation as a rationale for regime change in Iraq struck most observers in the Arab world and elsewhere as remarkably hypocritical. In a world where Signer's views ruled the day, those ties would be even less defensible.

Reviving an old debate over whether America should behave as a "crusader" or an "exemplar" in the international arena, Signer opts for the latter and calls for America to "draw the world to us through inspiring and resolute moral conduct". Indeed, electing a black man with a Kenyan father as president and then carrying out a smooth transfer of power may have done more to promote the idea of constitutional democracy abroad than decades of lectures on elections and good governance. For Arabs and Africans who supported Obama but doubted that a member of an historically oppressed minority group could ever win, let alone survive and take office, the November 2008 election was a revelation and an incredible vindication of the American democratic model.

Unlike the work of many political scientists, whose ideas are seldom debated outside the ivory tower, Signer's book has received high-level attention in Washington. Demagogue has drawn lavish praise from Anne-Marie Slaughter, Hillary Clinton's recently-appointed director of policy planning at the State Department. Some readers will find the recommendations too idealistic or too vague, but they are a start - and admirable for their humility in the face of an immense challenge. One hopes that his readers in the Obama administration, humbled by their predecessors' failures, will carefully tailor their programmes and ideas before deciding to set out on another democracy-promotion adventure.

Sasha Polakow-Suransky is an editor at Foreign Affairs in New York.

Demagogue was informative and thought inducing. Mike Signer has an engaging writing style interspersed with personal experiences / insights that makes Demagogue an easy, interesting read. His passion for democracy and the love of his country come through in his writing, but his optimism does not overshadow history. He acknowledges the contradictions of Jefferson owning slaves and the injustices of Andrew Jackson against the Native Americans.

My first impression of the book was "where was this book when I was sleeping through Western Civilization as an undergrad?" Demagogue quickly contextualizes the typical readings of a Western Civilization survey course with 21st century geopolitics, providing an historical context and theoretical framework of why democracy will survive in the U.S. Mike Signer shapes the major thesis of Demagogue through using the major philosophers and the demagogues that shaped their thinking. Starting with the ancient Greeks then moving quickly to the Constitutional framers the book presents the philosophy that provided the bedrock for the Constitution and the progression of democracy; reviewing Plato and Aristotle, Jefferson and the Constitutional framers and deTocquoville, as they relate to demagogues like Huey Long, Hitler and Moqtada al-Sadr. Mike illustrates his theory in a colorful, readable manner. I thoroughly enjoyed the book.
Demagogue: The Fight to Save Democracy from Its Worst Enemies

Had I not spoken with Michael Signer at a political event, I would probably never have read Demagogue: The Fight To Save Democracy--and I would have been the poorer for it.
The purpose of his book is to provide a political theory, both empirical (what is) and normative (what can be), to craft a foreign policy that promotes democracy by working with people within their own cultural context--as opposed to installing/imposing "one size fits all" democracy from the outside. And while his argument for such a foreign policy is compelling, his writing is far richer for what it tells us about our own (constitutional) democracy.
Signer uses the four criteria posited by James Fenimore Cooper in 1838 (yes, the Last of the Mohicans guy) to describe the demagogue (used in the most negative way).He included the "political tsunami" (41) Cleon of Athens and from the 20th century foreign favorites such as Hitler and Mussolini and lesser known domestic ones, such as Huey Long, Father Coughlin, George Wallace, among others.
Against this background, Signer introduces "seven great political thinkers who personally grappled with the fight to save democracy" (22)--Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Jefferson, Alexis de Tocqueville, Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, and Walt Whitman (yes, the poet as political thinker!) While Plato and Strauss "joined [together] on the wrong side of the democracy divide" (149) basically asserting the common people needed an elite to govern them, the rest of our grapplers "call[ed] for a strengthened political role for ordinary people [we the people!], coupled with a greater civic education and a stronger sense of responsibility and obligation" (23).
Along the way, Signer reminded me that ours is a constitutional democracy based on our collective constitutional conscience (the mores that de Tocqueville described), which values the rule of law and the "spirit that underlies the law" (210). And while we do employ the mechanisms of a structural democracy (elections, political parties, etc.) our constitutional democracy is not to be confused with the mere structural democracies of countries such as Lebanon, Venezuela, Russia, Cuba--and, of course, Iraq.
Singer's prose is engaging and his tone objective and respectful. For example, he gives a cogent and, for me, quite enlightening history of the move from conservatism through neoconservatism to the present day neocon movement. His assessment of the Bush administration's disaster in Iraq was justifiably (IMO) pointed in fact and analysis but civil in tone.
As "we the people" recover from the Bush administration, Demagogue couldn't be more timely. After the eight years of the demagogic forces within his administration, this book is a (clichéd) "must read" for those of us who have wondered why the egregious attacks on our Constitution were allowed by "we the people" to happen. More important, however, is to realize ways that we can renew our collective constitutional conscience so such attacks are never allowed to happen again.

I almost never give a book with serious flaws a five star rating. 'Demagogue' qualifies for an exception, first because we seldom see a serious work in political theory written in a style accessible to the general reader. Second, rarely in contemporary literature do we see relatively reasoned arguments on a subject fundamental to democratic principles presented with minimal, though not nonexistent, ideological rant. I will discuss the flaws in a moment but first let's summarize the strengths of 'Demagogue'.

Signer's heroine is Hannah Arendt, a political theorist who fled to America from Nazi Germany and became recognized as one of the great intellects of the 20th century. Her antidote to demagogues and political tyranny was the idea of personal commitment to "constitutionalism," that is, a commitment by ordinary people not to a constitution imposed on them by a government but to *the* Constitution, by which a people constitutes its own government.

The key to the success of the American experiment in democracy, Arendt wrote in 'On Revolution', was the fact that the Constitution came to be 'worshiped'. "The worship of the Constitution set in motion a great historical wheel. America's body politic absorbed the lessons and dicta into the way we thought and felt about political matters. We *became* the Constitution." (Signer, p. 199)

Lest anyone think this is mere academic hyperbole by a university professor, your reviewer has witnessed this almost religion-like reverence for the Constitution by Americans of all political persuasions in discussions in bars and mess halls, coffee shops and cafes around the world. I have watched political debates among expats from dozens of countries, from San Salvador to Sarajevo, from Puerto Limpira to Phnom Penh by way of Banjul, Kigali and Manila. To cite their national document as though it were a kind of Bible is a phenomenon unique to Americans.

I have never heard anything remotely similar from any other people, not even the British or the French. Our Constitution is indeed embedded in our national spirit and character. It stands, in the opinion of Arendt and Signer and your reviewer, as our single greatest safeguard against demagogues. In that very real sense we Americans truly are an exceptional people.

Now to the weaknesses of "Demagogues".

Signer spends six pages defining the term demagogue, making distinctions between a populist and a demagogue and between 'soft' and 'hard' demagogues. There are even 'destructive' and 'beneficial' demagogues. Further, "we shouldn't spend too much energy disputing whether someone 'is' or 'is not' a demagogue" because it "is a 'continuous' rather than a 'binary' variable." (pp. 36-37).

With so many nuances and distinctions pretty soon the term becomes meaningless. So we have Signer describing Pat Buchanan as a failed demagogue (p. 37) even though the author admits Buchanan never met three out of four of his criteria. The only one he did meet was his attempt to fashion himself as a man of the common people. Well, if that is the case why is Buchanan not simply a populist? Why use an admittedly charged word like demagogue?

I am sorry dear reader but this does not strike me as dispassionate intellectual analysis. Rather it is the kind of loose use of pejorative that characterizes the Left's bias against anyone who does not adhere to their orthodoxy. I have little doubt that had the book's publication date fallen a little later in 2009 Sarah Palin would also be tagged as a demagogue.

If Dr. Signer wants to be taken seriously as a political theorist this kind of sloppy thinking cannot be tolerated. I would say the same about any author on the Right.

The second and most serious defect of this book is Signer's identification of the demagogue as the single greatest threat to democracy. Not so. The single greatest threat is corruption and manipulation of the democratic process to the benefit of a small elite. That leads the public to lose faith in the democratic process and it then seeks relief through radical 'extra-constitutional' change. Loss of faith in the system is what brings demagogues to power and that is what political and economic establishments (the beneficiaries of corruption) fear most.

It should be no surprise that severe economic or political crises bring demagogues to the fore. Hitler and Mussolini come immediately to mind. The Great Depression helped make Huey Long dictator of Louisiana and a potential rival of FDR. Joseph McCarthy's influence peaked during the height of the Red Scare in the 1950s. One Amazon reviewer correctly points out that McCarthy was ultimately proved to be correct about communist infiltration of the government. True, but his tactics and wild rhetoric, including calling President Eisenhower a communist, so discredited him that elites had a good excuse to dismiss him as a crackpot and never fully investigate his charges.

Today Signer points to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and Fidel Castro in Cuba, as examples of modern day demagogues. Note that every one replaced a regime run by a corrupt power elite that had lost the support of its people.

That said, we now face two grave threats to our political system, neither of which are dealt with by Signer. On the left are those who, however well intentioned, consider the Constitution a 'living document'. Such a pernicious doctrine means that whoever happens to be in power can interpret the Constitution any way they chose in order to satisfy the popular whim of the moment. The fact is that the Constitution says what it says and the words mean what they mean. For those who don't like what it says, there is a legal way to change it, called the amendment process.

The danger from the right is the unwillingness by self-styled conservatives to admit that legalized corruption is endemic throughout the national political system. How else can you explain those who make excuses in the name of 'free enterprise' for corporate executives to amass vast fortunes while running their companies into bankruptcy and driving millions of responsible Americans into poverty. How else can you explain a slavish belief in so called 'free market forces' which have never existed and never will exist except on the blackboards of college econ classes.

If we are to avoid the appearance of a new and dangerous demagogue in the near future, political elites in this country had better wake up and recognize how extremely corrosive such behavior is to popular support of our political system. The Tea Party movement is just one manifestation of this growing discontent.

Unfortunately I don't see think tanks like Heritage and Cato on the right or Mr. Signer's Center for American Progress on the left being much help. They are funded by rich ideologues who will not stand for their pet predilections to be challenged. The polite salons of Georgetown and the genteel gated communities of West Palm are not the kind of places where you are likely to find the honest, courageous, tough minded realists needed to confront a gathering storm more dangerous than that of the 1930s.

Dictators and tyrants may rise and fall on the power of armies and secret police but civilizations, at least since Greece and Rome, have risen and fallen on the power of ideas.

How quickly we forget that the demise of Soviet tyranny was brought about by the triumph of ideas held by brave men and women within the system, the flame of freedom kept alive by western media like Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.

In contrast, the shallowness of current political discourse in our country would be amusing if it were not so dangerous. Our civilization risks collapse less through acts of violence than through the opiate of political correctness and appeals to passion over reason.

So we are left with this reality in the early 21st century: those who speak truth to power rarely win. Power almost always prevails, even if it is foolish, short sighted, and self-destructive.

But I am reminded of the words of Winston Churchill:

"The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, for we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations. But with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor."

To constantly strive to march in the ranks of honor is all that matters. We can only hope that someday those who have both the intellect and the material resources to promote a truly enlightened democracy will step forward to lead those who have but words.

I especially liked the discussion of the "cycle of regimes" that started in ancient Greece. Signer managed to give readers an eloquent history lesson on the roots of democracies problems and the threats that are posed by those who would usurp the power granted them by the people. Too much blind devotion to a ruler tends to create a tyranny. The tyrant becomes corrupt. His enemies begin to die. The ship of state tends to flounder. Noblemen rise to overthrow the tyrant. Jealousy forces the disquieted people to conspire and overthrow the noblemen restarting the cycle with the next ruthless, charismatic personality with personal ambition.

Signer may believe too much in his described "constitutional conscious" as the means to hold off a demagogue in the face of a society lacking in civic knowledge and political engagement. Read this book and formulate you own opinion. Converse with me about your findings at usrepublic (at) aol dot com.

Michael Signer's book is an interesting synthesis of history, philosophy and foreign affairs and is likely to be enjoyed by any enthusiast of the same. As the Obama Administration inherits the previous administration's attempt to spread democracy, it would do well to draw on Signer's compelling explanation of constitutionalism as the glue that hold genuine democracy together.
The book welds historical events from Cleon of Athens through Huey Long and Saddam Hussein with the philosophers that drew conclusions from those same events. The final conclusion is that democracy promotion abroad is undoubtedly important, but cannot just be the mere mechanics of electing leaders. Rather, successful democracy promotion is really an exercise in nurturing the spirit of individual accountability amongst all citizens for the sustenance of the franchise. Signer illustrates how Athens and the United States were able to establish this spirit and gives specific ideas on how America may peacefully and sustainably foster democracy by drawing on those lessons.
This book is well worthwhile for anyone interested in democracy today, whether they are the President or a rifle platoon leader on his way to Afghanistan. (I wish I had read it before my deployment to Afghanistan). Short in length, the reader can breeze through it quickly, but the more pensive reader is likely to tarry and think through many of the passages.

Mr. Signer has chosen an excellent topic and he beggins presenting the issue very clearly. Suddenly the author becomes oblivious about the title of his book and he starts wanderin in American hostory with no conclusion.
I wish the writing was a little more organized.
MH. Ziai

Mr. Ziai needs to purchase a dictionary and read it for a couple of weeks, if not months, before he has the gall to critique any book! beggins?, wanderin?, hostory? How embarassing!

Thankfully, I did not buy this book (I picked it up at the library). It looked interesting but I did not take a good look at the jacket before I took it home.

The author,Michael Singer, is "Senior Policy Advisor" at the the far-left Center for American Progress, so-called. Any author that thanks John Podesta in the Acknowledgements section of a book automatically loses any credibility.

Just for fun, I decided to read the book and mark down when and where the term Demagogue would be tied to Bush and the Bush Adminsitration -it did not take long.

The first part of the part is quite interesting and most of the book is well-researched and very well-written (although Singer seems to be in love with his Thesarus).

He correctly defines a demagogue and the uses the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Jefferson, Alexis de Tocqueville, et al., to prove his point. And up to this point, he is correct.

His problem is when he gets to this centunry, the same problem all far-left zealots have... For instance, Jospeh McCarthy is a
demagogue to Singer as he is to all Mercedes Marxists. Never mind that McCarthy has been vindicated by countless recent books over the last decade -by real historians with no political axe to grind and even some liberals- as well as reams of evidence released by the FBI and other organizations.

But as we know, evidence does not matter to Podesta, The Center for "Progress" (the progress of undermining our founding documents and our society as a whole)or the Leftist. Singer's basic premise states we need to protect not democracy but "Constitutionalism". Of course, Singer and his ilk hate the Constitution and its limits on Central government. That's why they refer to it as " a living, active" document but only when it suits their own purposes. That is, to change the Constitution illegally, by redfining the laws of this land though their appointing of activist judges and subverting the entie judicial branch and by infiltrating and infecting Academia with their lies and hate. They want to subvert the Consititution, not uphold it. So "Constitutionalism" means something much different to Singer than it does to -gasp!- a conservative like me. A conservative would agree with Singer on his central premise-Constitutionalism is the way to stop a Demagogue.


But this is, after all, an anti-bush book in the grand tradition of such
politcal hacks as Frank Rich. Cloked in unsound logical and numerous fallacies, Singer arrives at the incorrect conclusion (becuase if his central arguement is a fallacy his conclusion must be incorrect, Logic 101), that we must be careful of Bush and the "Neocons" because they are, of course, the new demagogues (this includes Kritol, Krauthammer and everyone who is the enemey of the Far Left). Move on guys, move on.

The funniest -or saddest -part of this book that purports to be such a scholarly tome (I'm sure this will be required reading in Academia along with other "must reading' like Chomsky and the rest) - Singer holds until the last page. A loyal liberal drone, Singer must include Obama gushing in any writings; this is Liberal Law. Singer writes that with the help of "those who understood the true premise of Democracy - Aristotle, Jefferson, de Tocqueville, and most impressivley Arendt- ...that "we would, together, bend the arc of history upward (to paraphrase Martin Luther King., Jr. and today, Barack Obama)."

Yes, you are reading this correctly. Perhaps the most dangerous demagogue ever, Obama, is not identified as such. To Singer, Obama is the antitode to all demagogues. Truly unbelievable.

Since Singer can not believe this because of the arguements he presents and the famous philosphers he quotes, he must be advancing his own form of demagogory. To write a book about demagogues to prop up a demagogue is obscense. As is this book.

Thankfully, we have writers and thinkers, true thinkers- not programmed robots who toe the party line- like Mark Levin. In "Tyranny and Liberty," Levin uses the same exact philosphers and their works, notably de Tocqueville, but comes to a much different conclusion. He has lots of footnotes just as Singer does (both well-researched books) but Levin reasons correctly and comes to correct conclusions. These conclusions are unassailable logically - unlike Singer's. This is why Levin's book is number 1 in the country. Since I'm trying to use logic here to make my point, I don't want to use an ad hominen attack. But in this case, I'll make an exception. Singer is a liar and Levin is telling the truth