THE PARADOX OF LIBERALISM
Democracy includes people and factions that are committed to it, civically indifferent and those who are hostile. The ultimate safeguard of democracy lies in the collective will of the people.
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In the early 1990s, Algeria held a democratic parliamentary election. The election pitted government candidates against an Islamist party. The Islamicists did not dissimulate their intentions: They would use the electoral system, and if they won, they would establish an Islamic regime that would destroy the very democratic process they used to achieve their victory. As the election progressed, it looked as if the Islamic faction would win. The government then called in the military to stop the voting. The intervention precipitated a ten-year civil war of extreme brutality in which many civilians were killed, with estimates ranging from 40,000 to over 100,000 dead.
This tragic event reflects what can be referred to as the “paradox of liberalism.” In short, liberalism, in the form of liberal democracy, – i.e. a system of government that holds periodic elections and upholds the fundamental rights of individuals - must allow within its ranks individuals and factions that are themselves illiberal. Liberalism, therefore, at its bottom, is inherently unstable.
I contend that this paradox is making itself felt in the American context at this political moment, as America has indicted a former president on criminal charges. Clearly, Algeria is not the United States. America has had a long and solid democratic history, with well-entrenched constitutional traditions, among them a complex system of checks and balances. Democracy has long been instantiated in our collective habits and customs in ways in which it has not been in Algeria and in much of the developing world.
But the presidency of Donald Trump has upset that stability, and events, especially the insurrectionary assault on the capitol on January 6, 2022, opened fissures that have anxiously caused us to reflect on the previously unthinkable. American society is divided as it has not been since the Civil War. Society is experiencing a culture war, which arguably penetrates more deeply than even differences of political positions however strongly felt. One senses, beyond the issue of what people believe, divisions are drawn along the lines of what people are. Discordance has morphed into animosity and is felt as visceral. The other is experienced as foreign, dangerous, and an enemy. The democratic norms and processes of dialogue, debate, compromise, and conciliation, in these times have been banished to the societal periphery, and overwhelmed by self-righteous certitude and rancor.
Democracy has been brought to the precipice. Fortunately, we didn't go over the edge. With the midterm elections recently passed, we experienced a reprieve. But the divisions remain. We badly need social and political healing, yet it is hard to see a clear trajectory or momentum that leads toward that end. There are tragically sufficient examples of illiberal democracy across the globe, wherein democratic forms of government remain but the substance is hollowed out. They are autocratic regimes gussied up with democratic euphemisms. There is no divine law ensuring that our nation will not join them. The endurance of our democracy, and the liberal values that inform it, are not a law of nature.
The paradox of liberalism has become evident with the indictment of Donald Trump. Trump has become the first former president to be subject to criminal prosecution. To his perverse mentality and that of his followers, it is a badge of honor, a rallying cry, employed to further intensify their loyalty to serve his political ends. The indictment, which came down this week (April 4th) is the first of four cases, and arguably the least egregious. The others include brazenly attempting to overturn the vote count in Georgia, pilfering classified government documents, and the most serious, stoking the violent insurrectionary assault on the capitol in order to halt the electoral vote count and overturn the election. In short abetting a coup. It was a shocking and destabilizing event in which five people were killed.
These initiatives, especially the last, bring to dramatic relief the fragility of our democratic system. At the heart of the aforementioned paradox is the conflict between legal, democratic, and constitutional processes and norms, which define our system, on the one hand. On the other are the political forces that threaten to undo and ultimately destroy these processes and norms.
The investigation by the Justice Department into the January 6th assault on the capitol needs to be done correctly. It reaches the pinnacle of seriousness and requires that it be carried out with requisite care and precision. The integrity of a democratic government rests in its objectivity, fairness, and its disinterested capacity to be untainted and swayed by political interests. Purity, of course, is never realized, but it needs to be approached as greatly as the messy reality of competing interests can allow. Once public credibility in democratic governance is lost and its fairness is swallowed by disbelief and utter cynicism, authoritarianism takes hold.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, a former judge, is known to bear the required temperament. Yet there is growing concern that the longer the investigatory process takes, the greater the danger that it will intrude upon the next presidential election. In this fractious climate, Trump's supporters including his followers in Congress, rally around the mantra that the process is exclusively politically motivated. The claims of those engaging in the judicial process, even if they are Republicans and Trump appointees, make no difference. Nor is there a scintilla of consideration or belief that Trump has broken the law, though the evidence of perpetual violations throughout his career is overwhelming. From the standpoint of his loyalists, it is partisan politics all the way down, perpetrated by Democrats who are unqualified political enemies, out to destroy our nation, and worse.
As the investigations drag on allegations that they are politically motivated will grow more inflamed and more difficult to fend off. It is not far-fetched or histrionic to worry whether our democratic institutions, in this case, instantiated in our judicial system, can take the heat. Outbursts of political violence and threats against public figures are rampant. Pursuing the cases against Trump runs the risk of further enhancing his appeal and igniting greater violence. It threatens to further tear apart the social fabric. But not pushing ahead with what the law and justice demand, halting the process of bringing Donald Trump to justice out of fear of political utilitarian consequences, is to accede to governmental cowardice and ineptitude, with the result that faith in the rule of law will perhaps be mortally wounded, and our democratic order compromised beyond repair.
No one can predict the future. No pundit or talking head can tell us what America and America's democracy will look like in five years. I haven't even heard our experts hazard a guess.
It all boils down to the strength of our democratic institutions. But with tens of millions retaining belief in the “Big Lie,” with multitudes held in the thrall of a power-hungry, pathological narcissist who glories in fomenting hatred, violence, and disorder, with Trump's craven and self-serving followers in high office stoking baseless ideological tropes, with irrationality run amuck in public life, the stability of our democracy can by no means be taken for granted.
Here is the dilemma we confront writ large: Prosecuting Donald Trump threatens an escalation of violence, social disorder, and tumultuous unrest. Withholding prosecution eviscerates the rule of law and the judicial system which are the mainstays of democracy.
Democracy allows, indeed, at its best, should thrive on differences of opinion. It permits argumentation and dissent. It can countenance opposing factions – as long as there is an underlying commitment to the overarching desirability, integrity, and wisdom of the democratic system of government itself. When the differences that democracy manages and strives to reconcile, recognizing that homeostasis is never attained, nor desirable, become so strident and uncompromising that the commitment to democracy itself is forsaken, then all is lost. This is the paradox of liberalism.
The final safeguard of democracy, its ulterior foundation, rests with the people as a whole. The will of the American people writ large transcends our laws, procedures, institutions, and organizations. It transcends the Constitution itself, which at bottom is a human creation, however highly sophisticated. As often noted, the Constitution is not self-executing.
The ultimate salvation of democracy, our democracy, lies in the disposition of the American people. It need not be a numerical majority, but can be vested in the will of an informed citizenry that molds the prevailing political culture, its values, and attitudes. If the democratic norms are sufficiently powerful to define the commitments of society as a whole, what Rousseau would have referred to as “the general will”, our system will be able to accommodate its members and factions that are indifferent to democracy, civic life, or even stand in opposition to it. If a prevalent mass of the American public continues to believe in our system, however fractious and flawed, it will survive the unprecedented prosecution, trial, and punishment of a former president.
Whether democracy can endure, as noted, is uncertain. We are immersed in a highly diffuse, foggy moment of political and social complexity. Our situation is highly fluid, and where we will go is unknown. Claiming no special insight, placing my finger in the wind, I personally sense that American democracy will survive the current assaults. Liberalism, broadly construed, will endure.
Donald Trump, though an unprecedented menace, has become progressively marginalized. The past elections did not evoke violence, and Trump-supporting election deniers uniformly lost office. And in events surrounding Trump's indictment and arraignment, there has been little fanfare in the streets.
These are good signs that may augur a brighter day. But there can be no illusions. The horizon beyond which normalcy resides is still far off. There remains much work to be done to stitch our society together and restore faith in the liberal values on which democratic governance rests.
It seems the prevailing winds keep shifting somewhat.
Fine analysis of our present situation. Let's hope that you're right that democracy will survive.