text:  You write in your book about the banality of authoritarianism. Why is it that Americans can see these things but don't feel as though they're actually chipping away at democracy? We should say we talked yesterday to the second in charge of NATO who grew up under hardcore communism in Romania. He said even his own kids have no interest in what it was like to live without democratic freedoms. So how can America instill fervor for democracy in a population that has mostly grown up taking it as a given?