The challenges facing democracies

by | Jan 22, 2018 | Features, Politics

Politically, 2017 was a head-scratching tour de force of bewilderment and unpredictability. There is no historical presidency that can be compared to that of Donald J. Trump. The question going into his second year: Is Trump an aberration or has he permanently transformed the office of president?

Is it possible that a single individual could transform what had been established by Washington, expanded by Jefferson, held together by Lincoln, and fortified by both Roosevelts, into something peevish, reflexive and authoritarian?

The aforementioned question is equally hyperbolic and irrelevant. The ability to transform the presidency rests with we the people.

A new book written by Harvard professors by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, “How Democracies Die,” gives wonderful historical insight, illustrating the manner democratic societies erode.

Rarely does such decline occur with a bang, but rather a series of seemingly innocuous moments strung together. Like a stick of salami, it is consistently devoured, a single slice at a time until it reaches a point that what’s left is not worth debating.

Levitsky and Ziblatt provide a table outlining four key indicators of authoritarian behavior:
1. Rejection or weak commitment to democratic traditions.

Does the leader attempt to delegitimize elections?

2. Denial of the legitimacy of political opponents.

Do they baselessly describe their political rivals as criminals?

3. Toleration or encouragement of violence.

Have they tacitly endorsed violence by their supporters by refusing to
unambiguously condemn it?

4. Readiness to curtail civil liberties, including the media.

Have they threatened to take legal or other punitive action against critics in rival parties, civil society or the media?

I would imagine those largely in opposition to the president are apt to view these indicators as but another “ah-ha” arrow for their quiver. But as with most things in the American narrative, it is more complicated.

If democratic erosion is indeed America’s trajectory, it is unproductive to solely place the blame at the doorstep of the current president. The erosion of our democratic traditions has moved at a crock-pot pace for decades, if not centuries.

American democracy has been hamstrung by touchstone moments of slow destruction.

The attrition began when paradox became a silent third party during the nation’s inception. Independence from Great Britain was based on liberty and equality in theory, while implementing qualified freedom in inequality in reality.

This led to not only a civil war, but also an armistice in the aftermath that included authoritarian rule in the form of Reconstruction. Levitsky and Ziblatt also illustrate how the primordial impulse of fear threatens democratic traditions.

Could Franklin Roosevelt have issued an executive order for the internment of roughly 115,000 Japanese Americans were it not for Pearl Harbor? Could George W. Bush, along with bipartisan support, pass the Patriot Act, were it not roughly five weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attack?

Fear in a democratic society is uniquely qualified to justify what would otherwise be viewed as abhorrent. It seductively masquerades as the asterisk, legitimizing what it naively views as temporarily forgoing its democratic traditions for a larger purpose. But in a democracy, what one assumes to be temporary, if it goes beyond democratic guardrails, can have permanent impact.

So certain of its pursuits, fear never asks self-reflective questions. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Vietnam and Watergate combined to add an unprecedented level of distrust of government that has only increased over time. The presidential administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon used mendacity to justify their actions, robbing them of the moral standing that accompanies the office of president.

Democracies die not from existential threats. Their demise is often internal.

They die from the gap between the intellectual commitment and the actual practice. They die by maintaining a thin veneer of democratic tradition while operating under authoritarian rule. That was Alberto Fujimori in Peru, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Juan Peron in Argentina.

Ultimately democracies die because of what the people are willing to tolerate. As tempting as it may be, immediate self-interests cannot be the rationalization if its path leads through undemocratic means.

Democracies depend on their values being preeminent, and not those of political parties or an individual. Moreover, they can ill-afford to have large swaths of its people succumbing to apathy and nihilism.

As Levitsky and Ziblatt offered in a recent New Republic op-ed:
“Constitutions must be defended — by political parties and organized citizens, but also by democratic norms, or unwritten rules of toleration and restraint. Without robust norms, constitutional checks and balances do not serve as the bulwarks of democracy we imagine them to be.”

Will the bell eventually toll for our democracy?

byron@publicmorality.org

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