Duke University historian Nancy MacLean says she’s noticed a trend among the American right wing over the centuries. Everything from worker’s rights to the right to vote has slowly been eroded over time, she says, and that compelled MacLean to write Democracy in Chains.

In the book, MacLean says American democracy has turned against people and argues that the libertarian right’s campaign for state’s rights is shrouded in segregation and rooted in a status quo of inequality. 

The book hasn’t been met without controversy, though. Bloggers and pundits have dismissed MacLean’s scholarship as partisan, but she claims the trend is truer than ever. 

Nancy MacLean joins Worldview to discuss her book and the state of American democracy. She’ll be speaking this weekend at the Chicago Area Peace Action annual dinner at St. Francis Xavier church in suburban Wilmette.