ABSTRACT
The United States and other Western democracies may seem to have a long way to go before becoming oppressive, but there are signs that with the fading of the old moral and political ethos of constitutionalism, democratic despotism is not only making strides but turning less soft. Woodrow Wilson wanted Americans to fight the First World War to "make the world safe for democracy". The new Jacobins are reinforcing, intensifying, and giving new definition to the democratist impulse and turning it into a broad-based intellectual and political movement. Even for individuals who are not themselves, neo-Jacobin ideologues fall into the habit of using democratist rhetoric and of going along with neo-Jacobin plans. That Western democracy in general and America in particular are in a festering crisis and might have reason to give primary attention to problems at home which is for them a wholly unpalatable notion.
