Democracy is in a worldwide slump. So is peace ¡ª both the international and the domestic sort. There are lots of reasons. What¡¯s the biggest?
Many pundits blame various kinds of polarization: Left against right, elitist versus populist, blue against red, educated or rich against uneducated or poor, nativist versus cosmopolitan, Sino-Russian autocratic against ¡°Western¡± democratic and so forth.
I¡¯ll argue that the dichotomy that matters more than any of these is civil versus thuggish. And our problem ¡ª in the U.S., Europe, Russia, Brazil, China, the United Nations ¡ª is that, lately, the thugs have been winning almost everywhere.
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