Not Here : Why American Democracy Is Eroding and How Canada Can Protect Itself - Rob Goodman

Not Here

Why American Democracy Is Eroding and How Canada Can Protect Itself

By: Rob Goodman

Hardcover | 15 August 2023

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What does it mean to live beside an eroding democracy? As this powerful and timely book argues, that is the question that will shape the next generation of Canadian politics.

As a congressional speechwriter in the United States, Rob Goodman watched firsthand as a rising authoritarian movement disenfranchised voters, sabotaged institutions, and made a coup thinkable for the first time in living memory. Now, as a political theorist who makes his home in Canada, he has an urgent warning for his adopted country: The same forces that have upended democracy in America and around the world are on the move in Canada, too. But Canada can protect its democracy by drawing on a set of political, cultural, and historical resources that are distinctly of this place.

In Not Here, Goodman outlines four such resources. First, the rejection of the dangerous idea of one "real" Canadian people. Second, the refusal of political charisma and founder-worship. Third, a relatively strong social safety net that empowers neighbours to see one another as equals. And fourth, Canada's longstanding search for independence from the great power with which it shares a continent.

Today, that great power is a democracy in decline, and so asserting differences from the United States matters in this generation in a way that it has rarely mattered before. Canadian difference is not a curiosity, a luxury good, or a vanity item: it is a democratic immune system.

Laying bare the historical roots of contemporary politics, and making an urgent case for action, Not Here is a roadmap for safeguarding a democracy under unprecedented threat.
Industry Reviews
"During the first American Civil War, Canada became a confederation. Now, in light of a similar chaos and decline on our southern border, we face another moment of national reckoning. Rob Goodman is perfectly placed to answer the most important national question of this moment: How are we not going to be like that?"
-- STEPHEN MARCHE, author of The Next Civil War
"The story of how Canada has learned to live with complexity while rejecting the European and U.S. monolithic-style nation state. A powerful rethink of what mythology--or mythologies--can be in this multilayered society. And finally, a wave of stories about the intentionality required to build a country like Canada. In other words, an important book."
-- JOHN RALSTON SAUL, bestselling author of The Comeback and A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada
Praise for Not Here

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