THE GROWING THREAT TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY WILL NOT BE REVERSED UNTIL WE RECOGNIZE ITS REALITY
BY
ALLAN C. BROWNFELD
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I remember 1968. I was working in the U.S. Senate at that time. We witnessed the assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Riots broke out around the country. Washington, D.C. was in flames. Army troops and tanks patrolled Capitol Hill. Many people thought that American democracy might not survive. Fortunately, it did, and we continued to move forward. Now, that democracy is once again being challenged, as manifested in the January 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
At the present time, majorities of Democrats and Republicans, in the latest polls, say they think democracy is in danger of collapse. The Quinnipiac University poll at the end of August found that 67% of all those surveyed said democracy is in danger, up 9 points from January. Seventy two per cent of registered Democratic voters and 70% of Republicans expressed fears about the future of U.S. democracy as did 69% of Independents. Another survey found that threats to democracy ranked as the top concern for a plurality of voters.
In early August, President Biden had a meeting at the White House with a group of historians who raised alarm about the dire condition of democracy at home and abroad. Comparisons were made with the years before the 1860 election, when Abraham Lincoln warned that, “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” and the lead up to the 1940 election when President Franklin Roosevelt battled rising domestic sympathy for European fascism and resistance to the U.S. entering World War ll.
Among those at the White House meeting were historians Jon Meacham of Vanderbilt University, Sean Wilentz of Princeton, Allida Black of the University of Virginia, presidential historian Michael Beschloss and author Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic. Applebaum is the author of the recent book, “The Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Totalitarianism.”
Professor Wilentz, author of “The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln,” argued that, “We’re on the verge of what Hamilton in The Federalist called government by brute force.”
Assessing recent developments in our political life, Darrell M. West, Vice President of the Brookings Institution, notes that, “The investigation into the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill insurrection reveal how close America came to overturning its democratic system. The peaceful transfer of power that has long characterized U.S. history was threatened last year and it took considerable effort on the part of many individuals to survive the challenge…Disturbing testimony…revealed coordinated efforts to seat Electoral College electors who did not represent the winning side of the popular vote and lawyers who encouraged then-sitting Vice President Mike Pence to nullify two centuries of constitutional rule through the view that he alone could decide who won the campaign.”
Beyond questions about the 2020 election, West points out, “There are possibilities for mischief via emergency power declarations and the Insurrection Act. The former allows presidents to declare national emergencies in key areas and rule unilaterally…The Insurrection Act was passed early in the nation’s history to empower the chief executive to deal with popular uprisings, such as Shay’s Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, and battles with indigenous populations. Presidents could deploy state or national military forces without any authorization from Congress to put down anything from mass rebellions to public protests.”
The Constitution’s separation of powers and checks and balances have eroded over the years. The Constitution, for example, gives Congress the power to declare war. The last time Congress did so was World War ll. Since then, we have gone to war in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere without any congressional declaration. Now, President Biden, without any action from Congress, has unilaterally announced a suspension of repayment of some student loans. He has cited no legal authority for such a unilateral action.
Concerning this action, Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program, at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, notes that, “Debate over President Biden’s plan to forgive student loan debt has focused on the merits of the policy. Who will profit? Is it fair?…there has been far too little discussion of the means by which Biden will implement the plan: an invocation of emergency powers…Biden’s move is a dubious use of emergency authority—-one that could invite more troubling misuses in the future.”
In Goitein’s view, “Emergency powers are not meant to address long-standing problems, however dire. Nor are they meant to provide long-term solutions. And using them to get around Congress, if the Congress has considered a course of action and rejected it, is a clear misuse of emergency powers…Progressives are increasingly urging the use of emergency powers to bypass Congress on major policy issues, including climate change, abortion access, and gun control…Sidelining Congress through emergency powers means sidelining the checks and balances that safeguard liberty and democracy.”
With the end of the Cold War, many believed that democracy would be the wave of the future. Now, democracy seems to be in retreat in many parts of the world, including in our own country, the world’s longest existing democracy. For too long, we have believed that freedom would be taken from us by demagogues at home or tyrants abroad. These dangers, of course, do exist. The more pressing problem, however, may be the willingness of the majority of citizens to give their freedom away for something they want even more.
In “On Power,” the French political philosopher Bertrand De Jouvenel points out that we frequently say, “Liberty is the most precious of all goods” without noticing what this concept implies. He writes: “A good thing which is of great price is not one of the primary necessities. Water costs nothing at all, and bread very little. What costs much is something like a Rembrandt, which though it’s price is above rubies, is wanted by very few people, and by none who have not, as it happens, a sufficiency of bread and water. Precious things, therefore, are really desired by but few human beings and not even by them until their primary needs have been amply provided. It is from this point of view that liberty needs to be looked at—-the will to be free in time of danger is extinguished and revives once the need of security has received satisfaction. Liberty is in fact only a secondary need; the primary need is security.”
From the beginning of history, the great philosophers predicted that democratic government would produce this result. Plato, Aristotle, and, more recently, De Tocqueville, Lord Bryce and Macaulay, predicted that people would give away their freedom voluntarily for what they perceived as greater security.
When I worked in the Senate in 1968 and saw Washington burning around me, I wondered what our future would hold. Fortunately, we moved past those days, expanded our freedoms and appeared to be moving forward. Seeing the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 reminded me of 1968. It was a major step backward. Hopefully, we will soon begin our forward movement again—-but we will not do so unless we recognize the real danger we are in at the present time.
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