This
book is an interpretive essay and a call to action, trying simultaneously to put the
democratic revolution of the
past two
decades in its proper context and to urge America to embrace that revolution and make it the centerpiece of our international strategy. The author is a resident scholar at AEI. A summary of the book follows
For the past two decades, we have been living through a global democratic revolution of such magnitude as to warrant calling this period the Age of the Second Democratic Revolution. Inspired by the values of the American Revolution, supported and advanced by American military power and a remarkable generation of democratic leaders, the revolution has swept the world. Antidemocratic regimes have fallen in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Even the American Congress has been radically transformed. The cult of the state- belief that
government is better suited than individuals or spontaneous, temporary organizations to solve mankind's basic problems- under assault, and in a surprising number of countries the powers of once-oppressive central governments are being reduced. Tyranny has been routed on every continent, and hopeful democrats, many of them survivors of frightful repression, torture, and mass murder, have proclaimed the people's right to choose their own government and
live under a system of law rather than arbitrary diktat. When the Soviet Empire collapsed at the beginning of this decade, it seemed that we might soon see democracy everywhere triumphant and that our children could live in a would governed by our highest ideals.
More reviews about the Freedom Betrayed: How America Led a Global Democratic Revolution, Won the Cold War, and Walked Away