Although Americans demand democracy in government and politics in general, they do not do the same for social and economic institutions. Using this as a basis for social criticism, attempts to lay bare the unhappy marriage between democracy and paternalism, and presents a new and mostly historical case for furthering the democratic experiment in the United States. This case leans heavily on recent historical events, but it also relies on insights derived from the founders of the American Nation and less on the statistical sort of arguments often employed by social scientists and journalists. Where most critical works stop short of offering alternative structures in detail, Albert Piacente gives a vision of how our institutional life could achieve new life, and free America of some of its baser contradictions. For additional information, visit http://realdemocracy.typepad.com/blog/.