Today is Election Day. We thought it appropriate to bring you thoughts on the current crisis in our democracy from Victor Davis Hanson, a noted classics scholar and a member of our Unleash Prosperity board of economic advisors:

Writing in the New Criterion magazine, Hanson warns:

“America may be still a constitutional republic in name, but recently it has operated more as an unchecked Athenian-style democracy.”

Hanson believes that the greatest threat to our system “may well be the efforts of Washington bureaucrats and agencies to destroy some 236 years of constitutional checks and balances and the political customs that have evolved along with them. Historically, one way that Athenian demagogues framed their efforts to obtain absolute power was to frighten the populace into thinking that a would-be dictator was on the horizon unless the people were properly empowered through ostracism and the popular courts to neuter him.”

Sound familiar?