Know Your Enemy
patreon
The Case for Democracy (w/ Osita Nwanevu)
🕑 Added 2025-09-12 10:30:04 +0000 UTCSince the start of the Trump Era over a decade ago, few words have been deployed as often as "democracy": how it's become imperiled, who threatens it, and what to do to defend it. In The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding, Osita Nwanevu sets out to understand the true meaning of democracy and defend it from its critics, not just on the right but those liberals who doubt the capacity of ordinary voters to determine their country's fate in a complex world. From there, he levels a critique of the Constitution for its myriad democratic deficits, then details what refounding the United States to be genuinely democratic—politically and economically—would require of us.
Listen again: "The Wolfe in the White Suit" (w/ Osita Nwanevu), July 5, 2024
Sources:
Osita Nwanevu, The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding (2025)
— "Conservatism’s Baton Twirler," New York Review of Books, Sept 25, 2025.
Sheldon Wolin, Fugitive Democracy: And Other Essays (2016)
Michael J. Klarman, The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution (2016)
Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998)
Walter Lippman, Public Opinion (1922)
Publius, Federalist 49 (February 1788)
Matthew Sitman, "Will Be Wild," Dissent, April 18, 2023
...and don't forget to subscribe on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!
Comments
James Talley
On my second listen, still grooving on everything. But Osita's rebuttal on "stupid voters" that cites franchise expansion and immigration waves...those periods had folks and mediating institutions actively working to disprove the claim that X group was too dumb/inferior to handle the franchise, and their disinformation environment was, I feel at least, orders of magnitude less intense compared to today. I buy the overall point that we can cope with low-info voters, but the examples seem weaker than on my first listen.
Kevin Trant
Great show! Bought the book
DC
I read "Democracy For Realists" years ago now-- and was excited to do so-- but came away thinking they didn't have a real argument tieing their book together, more of an assemblage of political science anecdotes without any clear political horizon or imagination. I've found Helene Landemore and Lisa Herzog to be much more interesting and useful.
his eyes just tell him lies
Serious historiography now on the contingent constitution, the coup at Annapolis (no notes, closed doors), and how it relates to Shay and Regulators.
