(Dobbs) If It's Not Democracy, It's Totalitarianism
Democracy "cannot be destroyed from the outside, only from within.”
Here’s an opening line from a news story that ought to get your attention: “A Republican state representative in North Dakota has urged authorities in Ohio to ‘ignore the results’ of Tuesday's election.”
That’s how Newsweek began its piece about the pro-choice victory in Ohio on election day, when voters embedded the right to an abortion in the state constitution. And about what North Dakota lawmaker Brandon Prichard told Ohioans to do about it: “ignore the results.” He began his arguably treasonous tweet with a frightful glimpse of his dogma: “Direct democracy should not exist.”
It’s relevant that this hardliner also tweeted last month, “Every conservative state should put into code that Jesus Christ is King and dedicate their state to Him.” Goodbye to the separation of church and state.
If this guy were just a rare outlier, it would be one thing. But he’s not. He has allies across the board in the Republican Party. He has allies in the United States Congress.
On the separation of church and state, Exhibit A: Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert has infamously declared, “I'm tired of this separation of church and state junk that's not in the Constitution.” She has supporters in statehouses and on Capitol Hill, and that might include the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Rolling Stone Magazine reports that he has had three flags flying outside his office: the American flag, the flag of his home state of Louisiana, and the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which insurrectionists flew outside the Capitol on January 6th and which is the symbol of a right-wing movement that promotes a Christian nation.
There are hard-right Christian campaigns from coast to coast to put religion back in public schools and where they’ve already made headway, it is not everyone’s religions they embrace, it is theirs.
On abortion, election results reflected the clear will of liberals and conservatives in Ohio, Virginia, and Kentucky, where directly or indirectly, a woman’s right to choose was the key issue. In the year-and-a-half since the Supreme Court abolished Roe vs Wade, elections had similar pro-choice outcomes in states like Michigan and Montana, Kansas, California, and Vermont. Yet despite all that, the pro-life movement is not taking no for an answer.
Four Republican legislators in Ohio’s statehouse, whose anti-abortion amendment lost by a margin of 16%, announced on Friday that they’ll try to strip judges of their power to hear appeals about the amendment and instead vest that right in the legislature they dominate.
These extremists don’t care about the people’s will.
Right-wingers in the U.S. House also have attached anti-abortion amendments to otherwise unrelated bills still waiting for approval to fund the United States government. Even the Farm bill, on which everyone from America’s farmers to America’s poor depend. If they don’t get it done by the end of Friday, it all shuts down. Speaker Johnson said yesterday that he has a plan to avoid that. But with the schisms in his own party, we’ll see. It’s bad enough already that Moody’s has moved our credit rating to “negative.”
It’s all because the extremists on the hard-right don’t care about the people’s well-being, let alone the people’s will. This is their definition of democracy, 2023. The people’s will is an afterthought. Something to be ignored. Even revoked.
They treat democracy as if it’s a matter of degrees. It’s not. Democracy is binary. It takes different forms in different countries but at its root, what democracy means is people power. “Demos” is Greek for “people,” “Kratos” is Greek for “power.” Demoskratos. Democracy. Or if you choose, define it as Abraham Lincoln did on the battlefield at Gettysburg: “a government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
You can almost tell which societies have some form of democracy, and which don’t. If every eligible citizen is entitled to cast a vote and determine the outcome of an election, then for better or worse, there is democracy. If interest groups are allowed to lobby their government or openly protest in the interest of causes they hold dear, then for better or worse, there is democracy. If the internet and the media are free and open for a full spectrum of views, then for better or worse, there is democracy. If there is independence for everything from PTAs to chambers of commerce to Boy Scout troops, then for better or worse, there is democracy.
There will be dissent, there will be corruption. But if dissent is not stifled and corruption is not ignored, there is democracy.
Here is the alternative: several years ago while reporting a political documentary from Russia, I interviewed a close associate of Vladimir Putin’s, and asked him to define democracy. His answer: “Democracy is a system designed to undermine authority.” It seems like that’s how some Ohio legislators see it. It seems like that’s how some members of Congress see it. It seems like politicians like these might align themselves with a definition like that.
University of Pennsylvania political scientist Damon Linker raised a key question last week about these anti-democracy extremists: “What if they have come to believe that the country is in such dire straits— has reached a state of apocalyptic decadence— that democracy is a luxury we can no longer afford?” He argued, “We shouldn’t grow complacent about just how dangerous it all is— and how much more dangerous it could become.”
It’s dangerous, because if we don’t have some form of democracy, we have some form of totalitarianism, which puts the will of the state above the will of the people. It’s dangerous, because to quote the human rights campaigner and Russian dissident Garry Kasparov, “A democracy is as strong as its people believe it to be. It cannot be destroyed from the outside, only from within.”
Ignoring the results of an election are one way to do it. Ignoring “this separation of church and state junk,” as Lauren Boebert and her abetters would, is another.
However, although these people are chipping away at the Constitution, they haven’t disfigured it. We can still say what we think and vote as we like without penalty. But we must not lose sight of what democracy means, and what it means to us, or they might succeed. As the writer Liam Siegler said in the conservative National Review after reading the tweet about ignoring the results of Ohio’s election, "I don't like today's results either but we have a constitution for a reason."
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Thanks Greg. Great essay. We have a duty to point out that there is a cadre in American governing roles who are anti democracy and a threat to us all. They’ll use the forms of democracy to win office and then end elections---like hitler in weimar germany or hamas in gaza in 2005....or Idi Amin Dada in Uganda.... ot DJT in America
Amen