Biden, ‘Trump Republicans’ clash on meaning of ‘democracy’

Gordon L. Weil

There’s been a big misunderstanding.  Or worse.

The debate over the meaning of one word may really be about the future of our government. That word is “democracy.”

President Biden recently gave a speech on the subject, though some complained that it was as much about Democrats as democracy.  He asserted that Americans all agree on historic democracy in this country.

Biden attacked those he called “Trump Republicans,” supposedly to distinguish them from mainstream or traditional Republicans, for attempting to replace American democracy with authoritarianism.  His opponents charge that he and the Democrats want to replace democracy with socialism.

Here’s the misunderstanding.  The two sides are using at least two different meanings of the word “democracy.”  This difference is not simply a matter of one word.  It represents the nation’s deep divide.

The U.S. is a democratic republic, a country where the people exercise majority rule through their freely elected representatives.  That contrasts with direct democracy, like the Maine town meeting, where the people themselves make decisions.  Or with authoritarian rule by one person and their supporters.

Making voting as widely accessible as possible might be considered to be democratic while keeping control to a small group or even one person would be more authoritarian.

Biden correctly pointed out that there are now efforts, mostly by Republicans, to limit democracy – popular control – in the American system.  They may believe that, if some people can be kept from voting, the reduced number of voters will make it easier for the GOP to win elections.  Anti-democratic efforts take several forms. 

First, if registering to vote or actually voting is made more difficult by limiting times and locations and by imposing complex identification requirements, some people may not even make the effort to participate.  Historically, this approach has been used to reduce voting by African-Americans.

Second, if you can devise ways of counting votes that enable partisans running elections to discard ballots from certain voters, that boosts the value of the remaining votes. That’s what worries people this year in Wisconsin and Arizona.

Third, you can organize voting districts to pack almost all your opponents in the fewest districts, allowing you to pick up more seats. Republicans are much better at it than Democrats. That’s gerrymandering and it’s being used this year in Ohio. 

Fourth, you can undermine confidence in elections by claiming that unless you win, you were cheated by your opponents. That’s what Trump and his advocates did after the 2020 elections despite there being a lack of proof.

Democracy is a process, not a policy.  The core Constitution, even before the Bill of Rights and other amendments, is essentially a procedural plan and contains little that would qualify as governmental policy. Voting is the essential element of democracy.

While Biden appropriately supported voting and opposed political violence, he also touted Democratic policies that have been adopted during his administration.  His speech implied that, if Americans adhere to democracy, they will be rewarded with Democratic policies. That’s where he went off track.

Democracy is a set of procedures to ensure popular control, but it does not guarantee results.  Candidates you support will lose elections and their defeat cannot simply be blamed on cheating.

Allowing for a decent respect for the minority, the majority must rule, whatever it decides and whoever it elects. Winston Churchill, a British prime minister, is supposed to have said: “Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others.”

The misunderstanding arises when results are confused with the process itself.  Democracy can legitimately produce demands for more government action.  Better environmental protection, public safety, and health care are not “socialism,” an economic system in which government itself produces and provides products or services.

For extreme conservatives, when government assumes new responsibilities, it limits the scope of action by individuals. If people agree to cede some of their individual liberty to a common effort called government, that does not constitute replacing democracy with socialism.  Of course, the people must always retain the power to change their minds later.

Biden asserts that all Americans share a commitment to democracy. Is he right? Much depends on how you define democracy or even if you think it has run its course and is no longer useful.

Some on the extreme right fear they will be “replaced” by the coming change in the make-up of the American electorate, when members of racial minorities become the majority of voters.  That was the message of Charlottesville and likely also of the January 6 insurrection.

Anti-democratic strategies might allow them to cling to power and block change.  So they try to discredit historic democracy by claiming it leads to socialism.  

Facing this challenge, American democracy, beginning with the right to vote, needs to be defended.  Its survival requires more than pious speeches.

  

Bullets, not ballots preferred by growing ranks of unhappy partisans

Gordon L. Weil

Ballots, not bullets. A government of laws, not men.

When politicians talk about the nation’s shared values, that’s part of what they mean – a non-violent, lawful, democratic system of government.

What we really get is something much different. Four presidents assassinated plus 15 threatened. Historic assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Threats against a Supreme Court justice and his family. And on down to Maine’s former Governor Paul LePage recently threatening to “deck” a Democrat.

A Maine newspaper editorializes: “Threats of violence are unacceptable. We can’t believe we have to keep saying this.”

You do have to keep saying this, because America has a culture of violence, especially political, and it is getting worse.

It began with the American frontier. In the 1800s, the country had more territory than it could govern, leaving justice to individuals on their own, often using guns for self-defense. Violence or its threat could substitute for government.

In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was the target of an historic political assassination. Under his leadership, the Union had won the Civil War and slavery was soon to be completely outlawed. John Wilkes Booth, an actor, shot Lincoln to dramatically punish him for crushing the Confederacy.

By the end of the Nineteenth Century, the frontier had ended and government, police and courts functioned throughout the country. But violence continued and the pace of attempts on presidents picked up.

Violence or threats have followed the Lincoln pattern of punishing people for their previous actions. It cannot stop them, but it feels good to retaliate and it may intimidate others from taking similar actions.

Recently, cases seem to be piling up.

Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger voted to impeach President Trump and serve as the only Republicans on the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. For their independence from blind party loyalty, they became targets for threats.

Cheney spent some of her re-election campaign funds for security. Both receive extra Capitol police protection. She lost her primary. Kinzinger knew he would lose and chose not to run. Violence was both unjustified and unnecessary.

Federal Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart approved the FBI warrant to search Trump’s Florida home for government documents taken from the White House. Florida GOP Senator Marco Rubio falsely inferred that Reinhart was a partisan Democrat. The judge and his family were threatened. His synagogue had to cancel its services because of anti-Semitic threats.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top federal epidemiologist, corrected Trump’s faulty Covid-19 cure claims, and he and his family became targets of a death threat. This month, his would-be killer got a three-year prison sentence.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh voted to overturn the Roe v. Wade abortion decision. He and his family were threatened. Because of the killing of the son of a federal judge and the Kavanaugh threats, Congress quickly approved added protection for Supreme Court justices and their families.

Most threats and half-baked attacks appear to come from Trump supporters, people who believe in him and the myth that his re-election was stolen. But, as in the Kavanaugh case, menace could come from the other side as well.

While there is probably no single or simple explanation for the increase in serious threats, they seem to reflect the divisive and unsettled state of the country. Since the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s, many people have come to feel that government does not act for them. They are increasingly frustrated and want change.

The elections of both Obama and Trump revealed strong sentiment in favor of change, almost simply for its own sake. When those elections disappointed such hopes, some became more disaffected. The right wing has grown and increasingly favors a more authoritarian approach that rejects compromise.

Trump and LePage tapped into that sentiment to promote their own political ambitions. The result was to legitimize the breaking of traditional constraints, sneeringly labeled as political correctness. Trump’s followers have felt fewer limits on taking matters into their own hands.

If the country had seemed to be moving away from racism, anti-Semitism, violence and other extreme actions, that stopped with Trump. His sense of unlimited power was transmitted to his followers. A few thousand insurrectionists took over the Capitol, claiming they represented the American people as they threatened to hang the Vice President.

Though perhaps questionable, some polls show that a portion of the population believes political violence is acceptable. Not long ago, even conducting such a poll would have been unimaginable.

The political debate cannot get much lower than a resort to violence. The frontier, long gone, cannot be allowed to linger on. The lawless legacy of the once-ungoverned American West gets in the way of the real choice.

How do the people want the country to be governed?

Why did Trust keep official documents?

Gordon L. Weil

I am biased.  You are biased.

“Everyone is a little bit biased,” says an article published by the American Bar Association.  “A little bit” may understate matters. A recent incident shows how deeply bias can run.

A Little League pitcher’s fastball beaned a batter, who fell to the ground.  For a few minutes, the situation looked serious. But the batter had worn a helmet, so he recovered and took first base. 

The pitcher stood almost motionless with his head down, obviously regretting the errant pitch. Seeing the pitcher’s distress, the batter walked over and gave him a hug and some words of reassurance.  ESPN broadcast this action and drew many strong reactions.

Now for the bias.  Some observers applauded the hitter’s being a good sport and showing his compassion for another kid’s distress.  Others expressed extreme disdain for the batter not having charged the mound to sock the pitcher.  At least he should have done nothing, leaving the rattled pitcher to blow the game.

Some were biased in favor of a player looking out for the welfare of another player.  Others were biased in favor of winning at any cost, which left no room for compassion even in a kid’s ball game.  The fervor revealed something about what divides the country.

Move from that scene to the FBI seizure of government documents in the possession of former President Donald Trump.  

By law, official papers in Trump’s possession should have been in the National Archives but were still held by an ex-president who is now an ordinary citizen. Trump could have thought that his false claim of having won the 2020 election was aided by his holding onto documents only a president should have. 

Some Trump supporters believe that the FBI action was part of an organized plot to harass Trump as he moved toward announcing a 2024 run for the presidency.  They see him charged with technical legal violations by people who disagree with his bold political moves.  That leads them to be biased in his favor.

Others believe that Trump is an arrogant person who saw the presidency as his personal property, giving him the right to do whatever he wanted.  He never had unchecked powers and, as a private citizen, had lost whatever powers he once had.  His opponents are ready to cry, “Lock him up,” showing their bias against him.

This clash of biases is fueled by much of the media that is in business to make money.  Each bias has its own media allies who keep throwing more fuel on the fire as a way of attracting more viewers or readers.

The free expression of these biases is made possible by a virtually unique American law – the First Amendment to the Constitution.  It rules that the government cannot stop a person from saying or writing almost anything.  It’s part of a political system unlike almost any other in the world. 

How can a country function if it is so deeply divided on matters ranging from the powers of the ex-president to kids’ behavior in a baseball playoff game?

The answer is “checks and balances.”  We have been taught that decisions made by the federal government are subject to a complicated system of checks and balances designed to prevent any part of the government from having absolute control.  That’s how democracy works.  It is slow and inefficient, but can keep us safe from rule by a single person.

Checks and balances are really how almost everything works.  While one side wants the Trump investigation halted because it is a “witch hunt,” the other side has already decided the former president has no excuse for breaking the letter of the law.  No checks need be applied.

Here’s what we know free from bias.  Presidents are supposed to turn their government documents over to the National Archives. When Trump left office, some presidential documents went to his Florida home.  He later returned some, but not all, of them even after receiving a subpoena.  The FBI then took more government papers from his home. 

Trump says there was no wrongdoing.  Decisions to be made by the Justice Department, a grand jury, a trial jury, and many appeals judges may be needed to decide if laws were broken and punishment is merited. This time-consuming process is how we protect both individuals charged and the national interest.

Stopping the process anywhere along the way because it is not producing the outcome one wants would reflect bias.  The system is designed to wash out bias as much as humanly possible.

Either the American system will work in its intentionally inefficient way to yield a decision or the built-in bias of one side or the other will ultimately weaken a system on which our country depends.