By John Titus
PEACHTREE CORNERS, Ga. | Increasingly, I am concerned by the challenges facing our nation in the coming years. Most issues are ones that are debated as to which approaches are the best – progressive or conservative. People of good will can often reach compromises which allow solutions to emerge, and progress made. The challenges to which I refer are much more fundamental and involve the norms underlying our democracy.
Titus
In their book, How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt outline four indicators of authoritarian behavior. The first is a rejection of or weak commitment to democratic rules of the game. Examples of this are undermining the legitimacy of elections and refusal to accept credible election results.
A second is the denial of the legitimacy of political opponents. Examples of this were the questioning of President Barack Obama’s birth status as an American citizen, or suggesting opponents are criminals.
A third is the toleration or encouragement of violence. We saw this in the encouragement of violence against protesters at campaign rallies.
A fourth is the readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents. Examples of this are declaring that the media are “the enemy of the people” or restricting the right to vote.
We take for granted the commitment of the citizenry to democratic norms. However, over the past few years we have seen a portion of the electorate supporting candidates who often seem to have questionable commitment to democratic norms. It is important that candidates be strongly challenged when their statements or actions are not supportive of our democratic norms. I, for one, will not vote for any candidate who supports the position that the 2020 election was fraudulent or “stolen.”
Levitsky and Ziblatt recognize forbearance as one of our informal rules. They define it as restraint in the exercise of power. The president can do many things unilaterally, but our institutions work better if he exercises restraint.
But this exercise of forbearance needs to be exercised by congressional leadership also. Senator Mitch McConnell’s refusal to hold a hearing or vote on the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court during the last year of the Obama administration was an instance of this informal rule being broken. Such a naked exercise of power weakens the operation of Congress and only invites reprisal by the other party when they are in power. In its own way it is an acceptance of authoritarian behavior.
The extreme partisanship which we have seen in recent years only exacerbates the difficulty of finding solutions to these challenges. Citizens and politicians need to recognize that in the political sphere their rivals are legitimate, patriotic and they can govern legitimately. Members of the opposing party are not enemies, they are opponents. To regard them as enemies only poisons our democracy and encourages authoritarianism.
We need to regain the civility, sense of freedom and shared purpose that characterized our democracy a few decades ago. In this time of increasing racial equality and unprecedented diversity, this is both our challenge and opportunity to “create a more perfect union.”
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