ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on Timothy Snyder’s work and studies on the fragility of democratic institutions by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Professors of Government at Harvard University. Snyder, Levitsky, and Ziblatt are all concerned that the conditions weakening democracy in other countries and during other decades during the 20th and 21st centuries are also present in the United States. Historians attempting to understand the nature of democracy in the modern world frequently cite Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, a young French nobleman who arrived in North America in 1758 where he served with the French army in Canada. A year later de Crevecoeur was in the English North American colonies where he married and then settled in New York State. In On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, historian Timothy Snyder expressed concerns 21st-century developments in the United States and Europe.
