The Real Threat to Democracy

The elitists of the left-wing establishment continue to demonstrate their contempt for ordinary Americans as the next presidential election looms on the horizon and Joe Biden’s chances of a second term appear to grow fainter by the week. Never one to disappoint when it comes to lecturing regular Americans on their lack of class and education – as she sees it – opinion writer Jennifer Rubin – hired as the “token” conservative - recently penned another astounding diatribe piece for Washington’s most left-wing newspaper. At this point, former President Donald Trump isn’t living rent-free in Rubin’s head; he has acquired almost all the erstwhile barren real estate and built a casino resort, complete with a championship golf course.

The gist of Rubin’s latest crayon scribble? Trump voters are awful people, pining for authoritarianism, the rest of the nation is too stupid to stop them, Republicans are “mendacious and cowardly,” and our electoral system is broken because it allows the minority to have a voice, which is apparently a threat to democracy.

At this juncture, a reminder for Ms. Rubin is in order: The “tyranny of the minority” in which she claims we live is no worse than a tyranny of the majority, which is what democracy represents. The mere fact that more people favor something than oppose it does not make that thing good or virtuous or “better.” There is a solid reason behind the Founding Fathers rejecting direct democracy in favor of federal republicanism and protecting it with a constitution.

One of Ms. Rubin’s more notable misdirects is accusing Trump of being “the only president ever to refuse to transfer power peacefully to his successor.” Not only did the 45th president never indicate that he would not hand power over to the incoming administration of Joe Biden, but that transfer of power went exactly according to plan, just as it has every other time a new chief executive has taken office. Yes, there were objections to the certification of Electoral College votes. In January of 2017, there were also objections. Congressional Democrats attempted to reject the results from multiple states carried by Trump the previous November.

Democrats to this day claim George W. Bush stole the 2000 election and cried foul again when he won his second term in 2004.

On Tyranny

Rubin also claims Trump is planning “tyranny” for his second term in the White House, should he be the one to challenge and defeat Joe Biden in November 2024. How she comes to this conclusion is not at all clear. Rubin offers no evidence that the former president intends to orchestrate an authoritarian regime. For him to do so, Trump would have to ignore Congress and the Supreme Court, disarm the American people, and eliminate their free speech, along with many other constitutional rights. Anything less would not rise to the definition of tyranny.

There was a president who did all these things – or at least attempted to. In fact, it is incorrect to use past tense in this case since Joe Biden is still in office. The Biden administration has largely chosen to rule by regulation. The current White House occupant has bypassed Congress on certain matters and flatly refused to cooperate with it on others. He has defied the Supreme Court by continuing to offer student loan debt cancelation despite an explicit ruling, ignored the rule of law when it comes to immigration and the vast flood of humanity crossing the border illegally, and his administration has bullied social media companies into suppressing any news or opinions posted online that it doesn’t like or that exposes its failures and corruption. Denying the public access to “unapproved” information and limiting people’s ability to discuss political matters is a fundamental and existential threat to democracy.

Authoritarianism Belongs to the Left

Speaking of history, for someone claiming to hold a BA in that field, Rubin appears astonishingly ill-informed on the subject. Like most of her leftist colleagues in the world of journalism and the media, Rubin speaks of the “right-wing, authoritarian movement.” She doesn’t define what that is – probably because it doesn’t exist. She claims that “tens of millions of Americans,” meaning people who voted for or will vote for Trump, have chosen to “reject the premise of our Constitution, resort to fascist methods to hold power and demand the country be redefined along racial and religious lines.” That’s a lot to unpack, but unpacked it should be, lest people like Rubin spew this inverted view of reality with impunity.

To begin with, the American left, embodied in the Democratic Party, has publicly and openly derided the core constitutional principle that the federal government has a limited and defined set of powers, and, in all other matters, the states and the people decide. This idea was articulated by Barack Obama who, during a 2001 interview, described the Constitution as “a charter of negative liberties.” At that time, the future president bemoaned the fact that the nation’s founding document “[S]ays what the states can't do to you. Says what the federal government can't do to you but doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf."

Rubin herself, in a staggering demonstration of cognitive dissonance, accuses the right of rejecting constitutional principles while listing the things she obviously believes the document gets wrong. She complains about lifetime appointments for Supreme Court justices, she rails against the Electoral College, and wails in horror at the idea of every state being represented equally in the US Senate.

So, in effect, Rubin is saying that decent people – meaning people who don’t vote for Republicans – must defend the Constitution, but we probably should rewrite or eliminate several of its principal ideas.

Fascism as a Threat to Democracy

As for “fascist methods,” Rubin needs another history lesson. An Italian philosopher, Giovanni Gentile – who was a great admirer of Karl Marx – once said, “Fascism is a form of socialism, in fact, it is its most viable form.” He should know because he is considered the author of the doctrine of fascism. Along with another prominent Italian socialist by the name of Benito Mussolini, Gentile laid the very foundation of the hideous economic and cultural system adopted first in Italy and then spread to Germany. It was not by some random chance or because it sounded cool that the German Nazi Party was, officially, the National Socialist German Worker Party.

In short, fascism and more traditional socialism differ only slightly in method and not at all in ideology. By contrast, American conservatives and libertarians want everything a fascist system would never give them, while progressives appear to be increasingly attracted to fascist tactics and methods.

Lastly, there’s Rubin’s accusation that conservatives are calling for a race- and religious-based redefining of the United States. Again, she presents no evidence to back up her claim. Libertarians, by definition, have no interest in any kind of religious or racial lines of demarcation. A small faction of conservatives – the most zealous “Religious Right” – may indeed believe that some type of religious segregation would be preferable, but the rest of the conservative movement doesn’t believe in such division. By contrast, the progressive left routinely discriminates against Christians, and especially Roman Catholics – oddly the confessed denomination of the president - and is already at work segregating college campuses along racial lines.

Jennifer Rubin managed to capture the full spectrum of leftist hypocrisy and doublespeak in her piece. She described the modern American left to a tee and then pinned that description firmly on the right. It was, all in all, a masterpiece of projection. The decades-old question needs still to be answered: If leftists believe their ideals and philosophy of life are so beneficial to society, why do they continue to deny aspiring to those ideals and, instead, claim their political opponents are the ones clamoring for all the things they themselves want?