The Crisis of American Democracy

This volume of lectures is remarkably prescient and historically relevant in light of the recent revelations of NSA spying, drone assassinations and the suppression of Constitutionally protected rights by the Democratic administration of Barack Obama. David North establishes in a detailed analysis of the 2000 and 2004 US presidential elections that behind the breakdown of democracy in the United States lies the deterioration of its global economic position and the unprecedented growth of social inequality—already apparent at that time. North analyzes the extreme social and class tensions within American society underlying the bi-partisan “war on terror” initiated under George W. Bush, which ushered in a period of aggressive militarism abroad and the threat of police state rule in the US that has deepened under the Obama administration.

The re-election of President George W. Bush in 2004 marked an ominous turning point in American and international politics, presaging an escalation of its program of international militarism and domestic repression.

The volume also includes an incisive obituary to Ronald Reagan and an assessment of the Kennedy presidency written by North and Bill Van Auken on the 40th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination.