The Dying Citizen

Victor Davis Hanson argues that American citizenship, a historically rare achievement rooted in twenty-five centuries of Western political evolution, is being dismantled by forces from both below and above. He contends that six distinct threats are eroding the material, legal, and cultural foundations that make self-governing citizenship possible, grouping them as "precitizen" dangers (ancient threats reemerging among ordinary Americans) and "postcitizen" dangers (elite-driven efforts to alter constitutional citizenship from above).

Hanson opens by establishing the rarity of citizenship. He notes that only about half the world's population lives under consensual governments, and the number of democracies is shrinking. He traces the concept from the Greek city-states of the seventh century BC, where property-owning farmers first gained voting rights, through Republican Rome's codification of citizens' rights, to the US Constitution. He cites Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant's definition of the Western citizen as someone enjoying lawful freedom, civil equality, and civil independence, arguing these principles found their fullest expression in America's founding documents. Yet polling reveals a paradox: 92 percent of Americans believe their rights are under siege, while 37 percent cannot name a single right protected by the First Amendment, which safeguards freedoms such as speech, religion, and the press.

The book's first half examines precitizen threats. In "Peasants," Hanson argues that citizenship requires economic autonomy. He invokes the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle's praise of the middle class as the most stable foundation of the state and traces how Rome's agrarian middle class was hollowed out by imperial globalization, creating a dependent populace. He finds the same pattern in contemporary America: 58 percent of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings, real wages stagnated between 1980 and 2017, and college tuition at public universities rose 213 percent in real terms over three decades while student debt surpassed $1.6 trillion. Home ownership fell from nearly 70 percent in 2004 to 63 percent by 2016, and the birth rate dropped below replacement level. Using California as his case study, Hanson describes a state with the nation's highest poverty rate, largest homeless population, and greatest inequality, even as its middle class flees at a rate of hundreds of thousands per year.

In "Residents," Hanson argues that the deliberate conflation of residency with citizenship undermines the meaning of being American. He recounts the historical bargain of immigration: newcomers adopted American language, laws, and customs, and within generations became indistinguishable from longer-established citizens. The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 and the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act radically altered this dynamic, he contends, by shifting immigration toward larger numbers of less-skilled arrivals while enforcement collapsed. The population of people in the country illegally grew from roughly five million to an estimated eleven to twenty million, and over 550 sanctuary jurisdictions arose to shield them from federal law. Hanson argues this harms citizens by nullifying federal statutes, diluting government services, warping congressional reapportionment through census counts of noncitizens, and endangering safety through unscreened entry. He notes that President Bill Clinton in 1995 and President Barack Obama in 2013 both publicly opposed illegal immigration, but by 2016 the Democratic Party had embraced sanctuary cities and amnesties.

"Tribes" contends that racial and ethnic identity politics fragment the common civic identity essential to constitutional government. Hanson traces how ancient Athens suppressed tribalism by creating political jurisdictions that cut across clan lines, and argues that America's melting pot succeeded through the same principle. He contends that late-twentieth-century cultural Marxists, drawing on thinkers like Antonio Gramsci and Herbert Marcuse, redirected leftist analysis from class to race and gender, creating permanent categories of victims and victimizers that supersede shared citizenship. He documents racially segregated campus housing and graduation ceremonies, argues that growing intermarriage undermines the framework of race-based preferences, and warns that China exploits American racial divisions for propaganda.

The second half turns to postcitizen threats. In "Unelected," Hanson argues that a permanent federal bureaucracy has absorbed powers properly belonging to elected officials. By 2019, roughly 450 federal agencies employed 2.7 million bureaucrats, and in 2016 those agencies issued 3,853 new rules compared to only 214 laws passed by Congress. Examples range from Depression-era regulations making it a federal felony for farmers to sell their own raisins, to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targeting conservative nonprofits during the 2012 election cycle, to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) extending jurisdiction over standing water on private farmland. The chapter also details the FBI's systematic deception of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, which secretly approves foreign-intelligence surveillance warrants. Hanson recounts FBI Director James Comey's admission that he exploited the new administration's inexperience to ambush National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, and documents how retired intelligence and military officials publicly compared the president to fascist dictators while media coverage grew overwhelmingly negative.

"Evolutionaries" examines progressive efforts to alter the Constitution. Hanson documents proposals to abolish the Electoral College, the state-by-state system for choosing the president; restructure the Senate; pack the Supreme Court; and end the Senate filibuster, a procedure allowing extended debate to delay or block a vote. He defends the Electoral College as the Founders' mechanism to protect smaller states and maintain the republic's federal character. He argues that the First Amendment is under assault through campus speech codes and mandatory diversity statements, while Big Tech companies exercise near-monopoly power to suppress dissenting speech. He traces the modern sanctuary city movement to a tradition of federal law nullification stretching from antebellum South Carolina through the Civil War era, arguing that progressives have adopted formerly conservative states' rights doctrines.

In "Globalists," Hanson argues that elites' identification as "citizens of the world" erodes national sovereignty. He characterizes the Davos World Economic Forum as emblematic of a global class insulated from its own policies, critiques Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Bill Gates for defending China's pandemic response, and criticizes former New York City mayor and Bloomberg News founder Michael Bloomberg for censoring reporters' criticism of the Chinese Communist Party while profiting from Chinese business ventures. He contends that America's post-World War II role as global patron hollowed out the industrial heartland and uses the NBA's capitulation to Chinese censorship, after Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey expressed support for Hong Kong protesters, as a case study of how transnational profit corrupts American institutions.

In his epilogue and afterword, Hanson assesses how 2020 and 2021 accelerated all six threats. Pandemic lockdowns harmed small businesses while enriching large corporations. Unelected officials rewrote voting laws without legislative authorization, resulting in over 100 million citizens voting early or by mail with reduced authentication. The January 6, 2021, Capitol riot ended Trump's presidency on a divisive note, while subsequent revelations contradicted initial media narratives, including the finding that officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes rather than at protesters' hands. By early 2022, the middle class's share of national wealth had fallen to 26 percent, and nearly two million people had crossed the southern border illegally in 2021. Hanson concludes cautiously, citing the Virginia parents' revolt against critical race theory, a framework interpreting institutions through the lens of racial power dynamics, and growing public anger at lenient prosecutors as evidence that citizens are beginning to resist the erosion of their rights.