Whenever You Discuss Politics, It Is Always

Democracy Takes Work. That's The Thing We're Really Finding Out, That, You Know, In Many Ways, You Know, The Past Two Decades We've Taken For Granted All Of The Extraordinary Achievements Of The Post-war Generation. You Know, Building This Global Alliance Structure That Has Kept The Peace Across The North Atlantic Since World War Ii. Building All Of These Institutions, Building All This Remarkable Technology. And People Have Privatized. You Know, You Can Now, You Don't Have To Go Outdoors Much, The Whole World Comes To You.

I Want People To Understand That, Look, We're In A Period Of Democratic Deficit, Democratic Recession. There Are Fewer Democracies In The World Today Than In 2005, And In Many Of The Countries That Are Still Technically Democracies, We're Seeing A Reduction In The Rule Of Law. And That's Especially True In Central Europe, But It's Also True Of Places Like South Africa, The Philippines.

If You Go On Tv And Say There's No Other Country In The World Where You Can Be Born Poor And Become Rich, You Get A Huge Megaphone. If You Tell The Truth, Which Is That Most Of The Studies Show Actually The United States Is Worse Than Anybody Except Britain In Upward Mobility, There Is No Audience For You.

I Keep Telling My American Friends, "if You Think Of Donald Trump As Only Something That Is Happening Inside The United States, You're Missing It." Because There Are Trump-like Events Happening Across The Western World, In Warsaw Pact Countries, In France, Germany, Austria, The Netherlands. As We Speak, The Second-largest Party In The Dutch Legislature - Who's More Level-headed Than The Dutch? - Is Geert Wilders's Party, Which Is A Very Trump-like Party, And They've Got 33 Out Of 150 Seats.

We Live In An Age Of De-democratization. The Number Of Democracies In The World Has Been Going Backwards Since 2005, And Even Many Existing Democracies Including In Europe Have Been Becoming Less Democratic.