Everywhere you look, Republicans are undermining Democracy.
From the Alabama IVF ruling to failure to support Ukraine, Republicans are abandoning the principals that this country is built on.
Arizona this week refused to extradite a man wanted for murder in New York. Their excuse is that they don’t like the New York District Attorney because he indicted Donald Trump. You already know that Texas has declared its own right to a foreign policy and barred US forces from portions of the Rio Grande. These are the lawless acts of an empowered minority seeking to dominate the rest of us.
Meanwhile, over in Alabama, a court has ruled that embryos are children. That ruling cited scripture rather than law. Families desperate to have children now may not. Legal chaos is assured, as questions go unanswered. Will these embryos be counted in the census to determine representation in the legislature? Will they be required to file tax returns? It is madness, and the result of an empowered minority that seeks domination.
Over at the Supreme Court, Justice Alito claims that his prejudice against gay Americans is a religious belief and opines that such prejudice is not only constitutionally protected, but that it is a more important protection than equality under the law. This is an anti-democratic power grab.
Most Americans are appalled by these things. We are not willing to be ruled by a faction, and we are determined not to surrender our country by allowing a portion to go its own way. We’ve seen this movie before.
It will not be enough to win the next election, though win we must. This time, we will have to work harder to replant the ideas that make our democracy possible. It is too dangerous for the most profoundly free people to be the most profoundly ignorant about the source of their freedom.
The foundation of western democracy, an idea hatched not so much in ancient Athens as in enlightenment Europe, consists in the ideas of natural rights, limited government, the social contract, religious toleration, and empirical evidence. These ideas forced their way into the world through the work of philosophers most Americans have never heard of- John Locke, Jean Rousseau, Charles Montesquieu, and Thomas Hobbes. Here in America, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams studied their works, and forged a new nation upon these new concepts.
Since the Civil War, these ideas shaped both conservative and liberal political thinking. The former focused more on limited government and natural rights to property, the latter on social contracts and natural rights to liberty. The separation of church and state, and the religious tolerance that results, went largely unquestioned. Facts, rather than divine inspiration, were the basis for law.
The right wing in America today has abandoned these foundations and reached back to an earlier idea, one that emphasizes a divine order. In their view, the structure of society is dictated not by people working together to find comity but imposed from the top. It claims a divine authority for both the social structure and the power to enforce it.
This is an old idea and antithetical to democracy. It harks back to the world that Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, and others did so much to end- the era of unchecked monarchy. In the contemporary version, leaders are not kings in the sense that they are part of familial dynasties, but they want similar power. Citing inspiration rather than evidence, they obliterate individual rights, and transform the idea of a liberating social contract into nothing more than a coercive code.
You can see this today in Hungary. In the name of a social order he says is ordained by God, Hungarian president Viktor Orban has eroded that nation’s separation of powers, bringing executive, legislative, and judicial authority under his control. He has changed voting rules to make it nearly impossible for his party to lose. Individual rights are no longer protected, as conformity to the idea of a Hungarian people is promoted. His order, like the one the American right seeks to impose, makes women servants to their husbands, makes gayness a crime, and requires media to spread state propaganda.
Orban holds nearly unchecked power but has never had majority support among the people. Here at home, where the Republican Party is in power, it imposes its ideas on abortion rights, gun rights, civil rights, tax policy, on climate, on wealth, and on books. All wildly unpopular. Both Orban and our Republicans prioritize their order over our freedom. That’s why they question the legitimacy of elections and the rule of law. Like the monarchies of old, for these folks, governing is about imposing social order where the ones in charge get to stay in charge.
I’m going to take a detour here to talk about a specific example that requires your immediate attention. Ukraine.
Putin had no interest in conquering Ukraine when Viktor Yanukovych was its president. Yanukovych ran a corrupt government in the Russian style- where power and order were imposed from the top, and businesses paid for favors. (His strategist, Paul Manafort, went on to lead Trump’s campaign.) Only after he was ousted in 2014 by a popular revolt that demanded an end to corruption and the ability to hold their leaders accountable, did Putin set in motion his plans to invade. It is not that Putin lusts after territory so much as that he fears democracy.
And it is not so much to preserve territory as to protect democracy that America must support Ukraine now. House Speaker Mike Johnson is refusing to bring to the floor a vote to aid Ukraine because the Republican agenda requires the undermining of democracy. Donald Trump says he can bring peace to Ukraine in five minutes. He is right, but that peace would be at the expense of Ukrainian freedom. He knows Putin would trade real estate for the restoration of a Yanukovych-like government. The fight for a democratic Ukraine is the same fight we are having right here in America. Our fates are twined.
For most of my life, Americans have understood that we have a sacred obligation to fight for freedom when an empowered minority seeks to impose its will, when it is willing to use force to intimidate and coerce submission. Today, one of our major political parties has not only walked away from that obligation, it has also gone over to the dark side.
We must win - and win by large margins - this year. We must talk about the foundations that make our democracy strong. But first, we must demand that the House vote on aid to Ukraine. Call your representative. Raise your voice. Tell them this vote is not just about Ukraine. Tell them it is, as Mr. Lincoln warned us, about whether democracy can long endure.