Can Our Populism Stay Constitutional?

Colin Dueck’s new book interjects a needed dose of sanity and clear thinking into current conversations on this fraught subject. Crucially, Age of Iron correctly underscores how commentators elide over national and electoral distinctions, frequently lumping together Venezuela, Russia, America, Turkey and Hungary, etc., as succumbing to populism’s spell and its dastardly consequences for democracy. This tendency is a refusal to take seriously the political matter at hand, affording cultural and political elites a convenient reason to dismiss their critics while not “actually listening to any specific or valid complaints of populist voters.” Nothing to see or hear, folks, just bigots and cranks.