Wednesday, December 8, 2021, at 2 pm Pacific
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In this far-reaching and compelling Independent Conversation, bestselling author and historian Dr. Victor Davis Hanson (Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution) is interviewed by Dr. Graham H. Walker (Executive Director, Independent Institute) to discuss Dr. Hanson's recent book, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America.

Human history is full of the stories of peasants, subjects, and tribes. Yet the concept of the “citizen” is historically rare—and was among America’s most valued ideals for over two centuries. But without shock treatment, warns historian Dr. Hanson, American citizenship as we have known it may soon vanish.

In The Dying Citizen, Dr. Hanson outlines the historical forces that led to this crisis. The evisceration of the middle class over the last fifty years has made many Americans dependent on the federal government. Open borders have undermined the idea of allegiance to a particular place. Identity politics have eradicated our collective civic sense of self. And a top-heavy administrative state has endangered personal liberty, along with formal efforts to weaken the Constitution.

As in the revolutionary years of 1848, 1917, and 1968, 2020 ripped away our complacency about the future. But in the aftermath, Dr. Hanson explains how Americans can rebuild and recover what we have lost. The choice is ours.

Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, the Wayne and Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College, and a Member of the Board of Advisors for both the Independent Institute as well as the quarterly journal, The Independent Review: A Journal of Political Economy. He received his Ph.D. in classics from Stanford University, and he has been a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences; Visiting Shifron Professor of Military History at the U.S. Naval Academy; and the William Simon Visiting Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University. He is the recipient of the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism, the National Humanities Medal, and the Bradley Prize. The author of hundreds of articles, book reviews, and newspaper editorials on Greek, agrarian, and military history and essays on contemporary culture, he has written or edited twenty-four books, including his authoring the newly published volume, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America.

Graham H. Walker

Graham H. Walker is Executive Director and Assistant Editor for The Independent Review: A Journal of Political Economy at the Independent Institute. He received his Ph.D. in public law and government from the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Walker has served as Associate Professor of Politics at Catholic University of America, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, Visiting Scholar in Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ), Senior Research Scholar at the Witherspoon Institute, Headmaster at Oaks Christian School, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Oklahoma Wesleyan University, Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, President at Patrick Henry College, Legislative Aide to former Congressman David Stockman, and Fellow at the Presidio Institute.

The Dying Citizen

How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America

“Hanson has a particular gift for bringing together a dizzying array of events, controversies and ideas and making sense of them by advancing a coherent argument that incorporates thousands of years of history. . . . There is enormous value, moreover, in thinking about toxic political developments not as problems of the moment but as destructive pathologies to which all societies are prone at all times.”
―Wall Street Journal

“Indispensable... Hanson’s immensely erudite and inspiriting book offers a most welcome corrective to those influential forces and doctrines in our midst that conspire to delegitimize the citizen and citizenship as such. In doing so, he provides us with hope that our society still has within it significant powers of rejuvenation.”
―National Review

“The Dying Citizen is essential reading for any American who cares about the fate of our nation.”
―Mark R. Levin