In the October 2018 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, author, Anne Applebaum tells us in her cover article “A Warning From Europe: The Worst Is Yet to Come,” “Given the right conditions, any society can turn against Democracy. Indeed, if history is anything to go by, all societies eventually will.”
Applebaum’s words sent a chill down my spine because Americans are notorious in their belief that the lessons of history are–or should be–guideposts for others, not for themselves. “Americans,” she reminded us, “with our powerful founding story, our unusual reverence for our Constitution, our relative geographic isolation, and our two centuries of economic success, have long been convinced that liberal democracy, once achieved, cannot be altered.” She goes on to note that “American history is told as a tale of progress, always forward and upward, with the Civil War as a kind of blip in the middle, an obstacle that was overcome.”
Several conditions the author mentions that indicate a society can turn against democracy are “polarization, conspiracy theories, attacks on the free press, and an obsession with loyalty.” Applebaum continues: “Profound political shifts–events that suddenly split families and friends, cut across social classes, and dramatically rearrange alliances–do not happen every day in Europe, but neither are they unknown.”
While she describes a level of political and personal estrangement that permeates societies in Europe, I ask, are her descriptions not reflective of the current political environment in this country? Perhaps I should be asking, is American democracy in decline? Is it not true that families, friends, neighbors, and colleagues find themselves on opposite sides of a political, cultural, and philosophical divide that is deepening in the U.S? More ominously, is that divide not creating a ripple effect beyond our borders that is ripe for exploitation? Did we not see evidence of foreign interference in the 2016 presidential elections?
Here in the U.S., an activist Supreme Court is determined to take away our freedoms while moving the country backward. Last year, in 2022, the conservative majority overturned the right to an abortion and, in June of this year, that same conservative majority struck down affirmative action policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Moreover, almost a decade ago, the Roberts’ majority on the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Section 5’s preclearance requirement, a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, despite having reaffirmed the constitutionality of Section 5 four times. Congress re-enacted it in 2006 with tremendous bipartisan support.
Section 5 requires some states and jurisdictions (mostly in the South) to seek permission from the federal government before they can implement any law related to voting. Thanks to Chief Justice Roberts and his fellow conservatives on the court, the result of their vote was a veritable flood of voter suppression schemes and laws in states (Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia) across the country to disenfranchise women, African Americans, American Indians, Asian-Americans, Alaskan Natives, Hispanics, youth, the elderly, and the LGBTQ+ community at the ballot box. In investigative journalist/author Ari Berman’s August 30, 2011, article “The GOP War on Voting”, he noted that in one year, “38 states introduced legislation designed to impede voters at every step of the electoral process.”
Republican governors, Republican-controlled state legislatures, and state Supreme Courts quickly declared a war on voting that continues unabated. Republicans are terrified of the notion that access to the vote should be universal. The candidacy of Barack Obama attracted historic numbers of first-time voters and he won nearly 70 percent of their vote. Alarm bells rang among Republicans and they remain hysterical in 2023.
“I don’t want everybody to vote,” the influential conservative activist Paul Weyrich told a gathering of evangelical leaders in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down,” he continued. Since 2010, efforts by Weyrich and influential conservatives to disrupt voting rights have been more widespread and effective than ever.
These rulings are examples of rights overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court that many Americans considered ‘settled law.’ The cumulative impact of these rulings is a deepened and broadened chasm separating millions of Americans, further poisoning any dialogue among groups that labor to bring us together.
On one side of the American divide are those who disparage evidence, law, and even rational thought. Applebaum reminds us that “In Europe, science itself was suspect, both because it was modern and universal and because it came into conflict with the emotional cult of ancestry and place.” Closer to home, some of Europe’s skeptical philosophical cousins, during the COVID epidemic, questioned the validity of science, evidence, rational thought, and the credentials of America’s foremost authority on infectious diseases.
Arrayed against the skeptics were those who appealed to a set of ideals: justice, honesty, the neutrality of the courts. This more cerebral vision, more abstract in construction, is harder for conspiracists to grasp–but both groups soldier on offering views that diametrically split this country apart.
At their core, the two warring groups grapple with the same two questions: “Who gets to define a nation? And who, therefore, gets to rule a nation?” To these two fundamental questions Applebaum raises, let’s add, who gets to remain the political elite, the cultural elite, and the financial elite? Answers to the first two questions determine who falls into the latter categories.
Are there not those here at home who espouse the idea of a minority party in permanent rule? What happened to competition as an efficient and just way to distribute power?
We have a right-wing governor of an important swing-state and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination who advocates an extreme, sanitized view of American history; rigid, but narrow system of education, control of culture, and the promise of the unitary executive if elected. We’ve traveled that road before. Should this governor become the 47th President of the United States, we run the risk of a leader demanding total fealty to his Party, or to himself.
Opposition could very well be met with, as Applebaum notes, “the full force of a modern, centralized apparatus behind it.” Those who accepted this narrow brand of authoritarianism became the face of a new patriotism and the willing foot soldiers in the war to retain power while shaping a new majority.
In an earlier piece, I suggested our future is up to us. Democracies have proven to be resilient, strong, especially when under attack from adversaries. The greater threat now is internal, and that can not be dismissed. We have the power to choose a direction before it is too late.
