A great essay: "We’ve become entitled to democracy — we take it for granted.But it is the people who enable democracy, with their f energy, motivation, and passion — what the ancient Greeks would have called virtue — to make it flourish ... just like a garden needs tending. America is at precisely this troubled moment in its history. A great contest between all the anti-democratic systems that we know of — authoritarianism, fascism, theocracy, kleptocracy — is what’s really erupting in America today. If you look closely, think carefully, go beneath the headlines, you’ll see a great battle for antidemocratic power being waged. What happens when a people grow incapable of democracy? Well, then the future isn’t going to be democratic. The future, which is still unclear, is being contested by different forms and kinds of anti-democratic social and political organization."