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A key ingredient for a healthy democracy is an independent and (to the extent possible) an apolitical judiciary. Yet recent polls show public trust in the judicial branch of the federal government reaching its lowest point in decades, primarily among Democrats. That is entirely because the judicial branch, and especially the U.S. Supreme Court, isnt ruling the way Democrats want. And their proposed efforts to fix the Court would destroy its credibility.

According to a recent Gallup poll, Forty-seven percent of U.S. adults say they have a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the judicial branch of the federal government that is headed by the Supreme Court. This represents a 20-percentage-point drop from two years ago Its also a 33-percentage-point drop from 1999, when 80 percent trusted the judicial system.

But its the partisan breakdown thats most revealing, and concerning. Gallup says that 67 percent of Republicans trust the judicial branch. While that number is down from 84 percent in 2020, its still very high and generally in the range of the overall approval rating since the 1970s.

But Gallup puts the Democratic judicial approval rating at 25 percent, down from a Democratic high of 80 percent in 2009, and 74 percent as recently as 2016.

Independents approval came in at 46 percent, which represents a relatively small but steady decline since the late 1990s.

The fact that only some 25 percent of Democrats trust the judicial system should concern everyone. They have already made it very clear that they want to change the composition of the Supreme Court, and would have already done so if they had had the votes. We dont know the exact number, but it seems Democrats werent that far from having the votes they needed (that is, if they could have bypassed a Senate filibuster).

Had they been able to pack the court with four or more new justices, any notion of an independent Supreme Court would have vanished.

Ironically, its Democrats and the three liberal Court justices who claim the Court is politicized.

Justice Elena Kagan recently told students at Salve Regina University in Rhode Island, The very worst moments have been times when judges have even essentially reflected one partys or one ideologys set of views in their legal decisions.

Heres the problem with her assessment: It is the three liberals, or four when there was that many, on the Court who vote in lockstep. It is only conservatives, including the more moderate Chief Justice John Roberts, who ever vote with the liberals on issues that are closely aligned with political ideology.

It was Chief Justice John Roberts who voted with the Courts liberal justices in 2012 upholding the individual mandate to have health insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). No one seriously thought any of the liberals would have voted with the conservatives.

It was Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy who voted with the liberal justices in 2015 rejecting a state challenge to ObamaCare. No one seriously thought any of the liberals would have voted with the conservatives.

It was Kennedy who voted with the liberal justices in 2015 to grant a constitutional right to gay marriage. No one seriously thought any of the liberals would have voted with the conservatives.

It was Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh who voted with the liberal justices last year to allow Bidens nationwide pandemic-related ban on evictions to remain in place. No one seriously thought any of the liberals would have voted with the conservatives.

It was Justice Amy Coney Barrett who sided with the liberal justices to block an execution in Alabama. No one well, you get the idea.

Yes, the five conservative justices and the more moderate chief justice often vote together, but that reflects their originalist judicial philosophy.

But the lefts judicial philosophy is swayed by any number of things, including public opinion. Thats why they sometimes refer to it as the living Constitution.

As the newest justice, Ketanji Jackson Brown, recently told a judicial conference, If, over time, the court loses all connection with the public and with public sentiment, that is a dangerous thing for democracy.

She has it exactly backwards. Its playing to public sentiment thats dangerous for democracy.

Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @MerrillMatthews.

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The real threat to democracy: Declining trust in the courts - The Hill

Jordan Kleppers latest half-hour The Daily Show special, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Presents: Jordan Klepper Fingers the Midterms America Unfollows Democracy, is set to bow on Nov. 1 at 11:30 p.m. ET, Comedy Central is set to announce on Tuesday.

The new special will follow Daily Show contributor Klepper as he interviews Republican voters who have fallen under the spell of 2020 election deniers and who now plan to vote for candidates who threaten to subvert the entire election process. The result is a quest to figure out if America is ghosting democracy.

Jordan Klepper Fingers the Midterms America Unfollows Democracy will also be available on Paramount+, the Daily Show YouTube channel, CC.com, video on demand and Comedy Central apps starting Nov. 2.

The logline: For nearly 250 years, the peaceful transfer of power has been a cornerstone of American Democracy. But with a large percentage of Republicans denying that Joe Biden is president, and capitol rioters running for office across the country, Jordan Klepper wonders: Is America unfollowing democracy? In this new half-hour special, Jordan goes back on the campaign trail before the midterms to find out whos defending Americas elections, who is denying them, and just how civil we can keep Americas next civil war.

Indeed, its once again up to The Daily Show and its fellow late night brethren to expose the truth about how democracy is dangerously close to losing its grip in this country, and how concerned we truly should be while the mainstream network news departments continue to shirk their duties and focus aimlessly on the horse race instead.

As Noah prepares to depart The Daily Show on Dec. 8, Kleppers name is among the potential candidates to replace the host. (Others mentioned in the mix include Daily Show correspondent Roy Wood Jr.)

Jordan Klepper Fingers the Midterms America Unfollows Democracy reps Kleppers third special for Comedy Central, following The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Presents: Jordan Klepper Fingers the Globe Hungary for Democracy, which followed him traveling to alt-right Hungary. That special received an Emmy nomination, as did his first entry, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Presents: Jordan Klepper Fingers the Pulse Into the MAGAverse, which chronicled his experience on the Trump campaign trail in 2020. That one also received a DGA nom.

Klepper is also behind The Daily Show short-form seriesJordan Klepper Fingers The Pulse, in which he interviews insurrectionists, anti-vaxxers and Trump supporters. And theres the podcast companion Jordan Klepper Fingers the Conspiracy,a six-episode limited series podcast co-produced by iHeartPodcasts and hosted by Jordan, which launches on November 9. According to Comedy Central, a compilation of Klepper moments at Trump rallies has now clocked more than 154 million views across multiple platforms.

Besides serving as host, Klepper is the EP and writer ofThe Daily Show with Trevor Noah Presents: Jordan Klepper Fingers The Midterms America Unfollows Democracy. Trevor Noah, Jen Flanz and Jill Katz are exec producers; Ian Berger is co-exec producer and director. Heres a first look at the promo:

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Jordan Klepper Takes on Election Deniers and the Upcoming Death of Democracy in Latest Comedy Central Special (EXCLUSIVE) - Variety

COLUMBUS, Ohio Both Tim Ryan and J.D. Vance have changed their minds on some major political issues since entering public life.

When he entered Congress in the early 2000s, Ryan fit the mold of a particular type of Ohio Democrat that existed back then. He was a pro-gun, anti-abortion Democrat who supported expanding the social net while opposing the war in Iraq.

But like some other Democrats, Ryan has drifted to the left on social issues over the years. He announced support for abortion rights in 2015, and after years of getting strong grades from the National Rifle Association, he gradually came to support gun-control measures, too.

Vance, meanwhile, rose to prominence in 2016 following the publication of his best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, leveraging the fame into work as a political commentator. Vance publicly described himself as a Never Trump guy in 2016, excoriating the then-presidential candidate for making appeals to racism and xenophobia and referred to Trump privately to a friend in a text message that became public earlier this year as having the potential to be Americas Hitler.

But as a U.S. Senate candidate, Vance now is a full-throated supporter of ex-President Donald Trump, calling him the best president of his lifetime. Hes also become more hardline and populist in his political views, settling on an emerging fusion of nationalism and social conservatism thats become fashionable among some on the political right. Vance found himself defending accusations from Ryan at the Senate candidate debate on Monday that he supported The Great Replacement theory, which supposes that Democrats are encouraging non-white immigrants to strengthen their political power.

Cleveland.com / The Plain Dealer interviewed both candidates, asking them about their shifting views and other issues as part of our coverage comparing the two mens stances. This is the second and final part of our series, which also culls from public statements each have made.

Both are running to replace Republican Sen. Rob Portman, who is retiring at the end of the year. The election will be held on Nov. 8, and early voting began last week.

If you missed our first story, it compared Vance and Ryan on economic issues, energy and the environment, health care, and public safety and gun restrictions.

Consistency

In past election campaigns, Ryan has explained his evolution on social issues, saying his conversations with women caused him to announce he was pro-choice in 2015, and that the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 pushed him toward supporting some new gun restrictions.

More recently, Ryan also has defended himself against criticism from Vance that he tacked to the left during a short-lived run for president in 2019 only to calibrate toward the center as a candidate running statewide in Ohio.

Vances critique involves Ryan describing himself as all-in on natural gas now after suggesting he might ban fracking on federal lands several years ago; criticizing Bidens August executive order forgiving a portion of federally held student debt after Ryan voted for similar measures in 2020; and saying he would support getting rid of gas-powered vehicles from the roads sometime before 2040.

Ryan has disputed being a natural-gas opponent, questioned the timing and other aspects of Bidens student-loan plan and said he is an enthusiastic supporter of the electric-vehicle transition but doesnt want to ban existing cars.

Asked about the general criticism, Ryan pointed out that he argued with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders during his presidential campaign over Medicare for All. Ryan said imposing it immediately would harm union workers who had bargained away pay increases in favor of better health benefits.

The throughline of my entire career has been whats in the best interest of working-class people, Ryan said. He hasnt been on the forefront of trying to fight for anything other than himself. And Ive been taking the lumps from Bernie Sanders and [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi. Ive been in the mix trying to do whats right.

Vance, meanwhile, has said he was skeptical of Trump, but he was won over by Trumps policies. This was part of the journey that eventually led to him getting Trumps endorsement, which helped him win a crowded Republican primary in May.

Beyond Trump, Vance also has changed his tune on individual issues, like matter-of-factly describing the climate problem in 2020 while downplaying the severity of the issue more recently. In 2018, Vance expressed support for some form of red flag laws that make it easier for police to seize guns from people deemed to be a safety threat, but more recently called gun restrictions a giant distraction.

In addition, Vance dramatically has changed his general tone as a public figure, shifting from penning an op-ed in 2017 warmly praising ex-President Barack Obama as an admirable man with whom he disagreed, to more recently describing the childless cat ladies he said run the Democratic Party and accusing Biden of intentionally allowing Trump voters to die of drug overdoses.

Explaining some of his hardening viewpoints previously, Vance has said Democrats and progressive social forces have moved sharply to the left in recent years. And in an interview, he said his personal experiences running in elite circles caused him to sour on the people running the country.

If theres been a change in my thinking, I think that its where I used to see a lot of American leadership as well-intentioned, but wrong about some pretty core issues and right about some core issues, I now think that American leadership oscillates between willfully blind and actively corrupt, Vance said.

Abortion / Social issues

Ryan has an across-the-board, generally progressive outlook on social issues, including favoring same-sex marriage and opposing restrictions on abortion. But he has tried to de-emphasize hot-button cultural issues he says are politically divisive and distracting from more core issues.

Asked about participation by transgender athletes in school sports, which Republicans have proposed limiting through a series of bills in Ohio and elsewhere, Ryan explained his general viewpoint.

Most of this stuff needs to be handled by local school districts and local communities and local athletic associations and that kind of thing, but from a federal law standpoint, to me, we need to make sure everyones protected, Ryan said. And we really shouldnt be bullying the most vulnerable people in our society. Like, these are still kids, and theyre vulnerable.

Vance is a social conservative, opposing abortion except in instances to save the life of the mother and praising the U.S. Supreme Court decision voerturning Roe v. Wade. Hes also sharply criticized progressive views on gender.

Pressed on abortion during Mondays debate, Vance declined to spell out other abortion exemptions he might support, calling himself pro-life in principle.

I know people who have been pro-life since before I was born. And one of the things they will tell you is they support an exception in the case of incest... but an incest exception looks different at three weeks of pregnancy versus 39 weeks of pregnancy, Vance said. So I actually dont think that you can say on a debate stage, every single thing that youre going to vote for when it comes to an abortion piece of legislation.

Asked about same-sex marriage, Vance has pointed to the position of the Catholic church, which officially opposes it. During the Oct. 10 candidate debate, Vance said he opposes a bill meant to codify same-sex marriage rights while also saying: Gay marriage is the law of the land in this country. And Im not trying to do anything to change that.

Foreign policy / immigration

There is a major contrast between Ryan and Vance when it comes to foreign policy. Vance is more of an isolationist, critical of American involvement in Ukraine, while Ryan has been a vocal proponent for funding the Ukrainian military.

We have to be very judicious in our in our engagements, but we have to also support freedom-loving countries like Ukraine, Ryan said.

Vance, meanwhile, said the United States has a role to play in the world, whether it be moral or otherwise, and said he admires the resolve of the Ukrainian people.

But Vance fears continued escalation could have catastrophic consequences for the world.

We have to be incredibly cautious about the risks of escalating war, and I think too many of our leaders just dont think about it that way, Vance said.

Both Vance and Ryan call for a tougher stance on China, including the potential to have to defend Taiwan, the politically independent island that China claims is part of the mainland country. Ryan has framed his campaign generally around the need for the U.S. to compete geopolitically with China, leading to some pushback from some Asian-American and progressive circles for veering into xenophobia.

Its not black and white, but if our companies and our business and our military dont have our presence felt in some way, shape or form around the world, China will fill that void, Ryan said.

Vance said he views Taiwan differently than Ukraine, in part since Taiwan is where a huge amount of the computer chips the U.S. relies on are manufactured.

The thing we need to do is get ourselves in a position where we dont have to rely on the Chinese and Taiwanese in the first place, Vance said.

When it comes to immigration, Ryan said he supports comprehensive immigration reform, including tougher border security and a path to citizenship for the roughly 10 million undocumented immigrants currently in the U.S. He says he wants to promote legal immigration, including for refugees, by streamlining the process.

Vance has positioned himself as an immigration hardliner, tying the security situation at the southern border to rising drug addiction levels.

Hes also described undocumented immigrants as a source for cheap labor that keep overall wages down, while also expressing support for promoting immigration for skilled workers his wife is Indian-American whose parents immigrated to the U.S. legally while seeking to lower immigration levels overall.

During his Senate campaign, Vance has described the invasion at the southern border, and in his political ads from the Republican primary campaign, accused Democratic leaders of supporting leniency on the border to help secure their political power by attracting new voters.

Vance has described what he says are efforts from Democratic leaders to replace American voters by granting legal status to undocumented immigrants. This has led to criticism that his views are similar to the explicitly racist Great Replacement Theory.

During a fiery exchange in Mondays debate, Vance said the criticism offends him, especially given that his three young children are biracial.

Its disgusting and Ive never endorsed it. Its such an unbelievable accusation, Tim. To believe in a border, Tim Ryan thinks Ive endorsed the Great Replacement Theory, Vance said on Monday.

Vance also blasted Ryan for supporting amnesty for people in the country illegally and blamed him for the widely covered rape of a 10-year-old girl that led her to get an abortion in Indiana, since the alleged rapist is an undocumented immigrant.

Voting / democracy

In Congress, Ryan voted for the Voting Rights Act, a sweeping bill that would expand early voting and voting by mail nationally; require states to automatically register people to vote and to offer online voter-registration options; as well as strengthen federal rules for disclosure and enforcement in political spending.

The bill is backed by voting-rights groups, although Republican critics have called it an overreach into how states run elections.

Using the filibuster rule, Republicans have blocked the bill in the Senate, where Democrats hold a light majority, but where at least 60 votes are needed to pass most legislation. Ryan said he supports ending the filibuster, saying it contributes to gridlock, even if it means it will make it easier for Republicans to pass legislation in the future.

Vance, meanwhile, has called for an end to early voting and opposes ending the filibuster. Hes also among the Republicans who called the 2020 presidential election into question.

Republican criticism of the election ranges on a spectrum from false and conspiratorial such as Trumps contention that widespread fraud, possibly aided by hacked voting machines, caused him to lose to more specific, such as criticizing Facebook and other social media companies for suppressing a negative New York Post story about Hunter Biden close to the election, or raising concerns after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg granted $300 million for elections administration in 2020 to battleground states across the country, including in Ohio.

Vance has run the gamut, telling the Youngstown Vindicator in October 2021 that he thinks there probably was significant voter fraud in Ohio, even though Ohio elections officials, including Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, whom Vance has endorsed, have said for years that fraudulent votes are almost non-existent.

More recently, Vance has fallen more into the latter camp.

There are many arguments we can make, but heres the thing that I think made the election fundamentally a problem in 2020, Vance recently told the USA Today Ohio Bureau. Its not foreign people hacking into the voting machines and changing Biden votes into Trump votes or Trump votes into Biden votes. Its the influence of the technology industry on the election.

Ryan also has harshly condemned Trump and his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and tried to prevent the presidential election from being certified. He has praised the work of the House Committee investigating the attack as a necessary fact-finding mission.

We should figure out whats going on. And I do think that the insurrection was a group of people who are trying to overthrow the United States of America. And I think they were trying to stop the peaceful transition of power from President Trump to President Biden and disenfranchise over 80 million of our fellow citizens, Ryan saids during Mondays debate.

Vance, meanwhile, has downplayed the events. In a social media video he posted the week of Jan. 6, 2022, he mocked the significance of the riot, criticized the Jan. 6 committee as conducting a show trial, raised money for criminal defendants charged for their role in the riot and said Republicans instead should form a committee to aggressively investigate the national social unrest in 2020 after the death of George Floyd instead.

It goes back to four years ago, Vance said during Mondays debate. The obsession with the idea that Donald Trump somehow had the election stolen by the Russians. Theres been a nonstop political effort to not honor the election of 2016. And I think thats just as much of a threat to democracy as the violence on January the Sixth.

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Abortion, immigration and democracy: How do U.S. Senate candidates J.D. Vance and Tim Ryan compare on the iss - cleveland.com

We are three weeks out from the midterm elections and by all accounts many races are within the margin of error. It's pretty clear that the "red tsunami" everyone was expecting has not materialized. Republicans are still favored to win (at least in the House) but it's looking more and more as if it will be a very narrow victory if they do and there's a decent chance they won't.

So, of course, Democrats are going on television arguing that everyone is doing it wrong. It's just how they roll. The latest disagreements come from those who think candidates should focus on the old saw, "It's the economy, stupid," because inflation has people so spooked. Sen. Bernie Sanders appeared on "Meet the Press" over the weekend and gave his familiar spiel about income inequality and big corporations, suggesting that some Trump voters would be open to that argument. He begged Democrats to focus more intently on the economy and attack the Republican threats to Social Security and Medicare.

Others believe that the best issue for Democrats this fall is the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which has already been shown to motivate women of all demographics in the primaries and special elections. And some believe the fascist turn of the GOP and its assault on democracy is the most important issue and must be addressed head-on.

If only we were living in a world in which one could pick and choose issues of importance to the American people from an la carte menu. But that's just not where we are as a country. The Democrats have to be prepared to address all those things and more.

No doubt the economy is a difficult issue this year, even though Democrats have an excellent legislative record to run on and the best job market in 40 years. But there's simply no denying that inflation is a big problem for everyone.Democratic strategist Mike Lux has circulated a memobased on polling from Stan Greenberg and Celinda Lake thatrecommends five economic points for candidates to emphasize. The first is to grab the Bernie Sanders complaints about multinational corporations Big Oil, Big Food, Big Shipping, etc. which are making record profits in this time of inflation by gouging consumers, and point out that the Republicans have nothing to offer to tame these abuses, which is true. (This reportin the Washington Post suggests that swing voters already understand this.)

Lux also suggests that candidates remind people that the Democrats are lowering drug prices and health insurance premiums, point out that Social Security recipients are going to get the biggest raise they've gotten in 40 years, inform voters that manufacturing is coming back to America (which they probably don't realize) and, finally, promise to fight for reinstating the child tax credit that has now expired. All of taht certainly beats the stale GOP talking points about cutting taxes and "entitlements."

The abortion issue is straightforward. In the wake of theDobbs decision, Republicans all over the country have raced to restrict abortion rights in the most draconian way possible, in some states banning abortion altogether. Stories of rape and incest survivors being denied care are everywhere. Women often can't get needed medication and procedures because ill-informed zealots have drafted sloppy laws that make it impossible for doctors to perform their duties without risking legal jeopardy. It's a mess, and Democrats are morally bound to talk about it.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Meanwhile, on the other side we are seeing a full-fledged racist and antisemitic festival of hate used as the primary motivator to get their base out to vote. Take a look at this ad that has played throughout the Major League Baseball playoffs on Fox, which, according to Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer, is brought to you by a group run by Trump's "immigration czar" Stephen Miller:

That makes theinfamous Willie Horton ad which ran only briefly 34 years ago, because it was considered too blatantly racist look like child's play.

And now we have the former president of the United States blithely posting antisemitic tropes on his struggling social media platform, demanding that American Jews be grateful for everything he has supposedly done for them and suggesting they get with the program "before it's too late." Too late for what, he doesn't say.

So yes, Republicans have gone back to the deep well of racism once again, obviously believing that's what motivates their base. They aren't wrong.

When you see all of that laid out, you might think we were dealing with a standard issues-based election, more or less, however critical those issues are and however extreme the Republicans have become. Certainly, the media is trying to treat it that way. But this is an election like no other and it's got nothing to do with "issues" in the normal sense. The Republicans are intent upon electing hundreds of election deniers to office, and are bent on destroying our election system as we've known it for the last half-century or more.

Mainstream media is eager to treat this as a standard issues-based election, no matter how extreme the Republicans have become.But this is an election like no other and it's got nothing to do with "issues" in the normal sense.

Bolts Magazine has compiled a comprehensive analysis of the election deniers running for secretary of state around the country. Seventeen out of 35 Republican nominees have either denied the results of the 2020 election, sought to overturn them or refused to affirm the legitimacy of the outcome. Six of those 17 candidates are in crucial battleground states. There are hundreds of candidates in down-ballot races that feature similarly delusional or malicious candidates.

Plenty of big Republican names running on election denial as well, even if some of them are willing to modulate that just a little. When asked if they think Joe Biden won the 2020 election they'll respond by saying things like, "Joe Biden is the president," which I guess they think fools some people. But everyone knows what they mean. They are making it clear that, like their mentor Donald Trump, they will only accept election results if they win:

Donald Trumpplotted the Big Lie long before the 2020 election, and it had been on his mind since at least 2016. That was clear enough shown in real time and was recently laid out in detail by the House Jan. 6 committee. Any Republican officials who are not fully on board with this dangerous attack on the election system are seemingly paralyzed and unwilling to deny it.

The MAGA movement is openly assaulting democracy. Yet as we head into the final days of this campaign, mainstream media keeps trying to portray this as just another election. Gas prices are going up and down and Republicans are running scary ads with Black and brown people and threatening to cut Social Security, all of which is important and must be addressed. But none of that will matter if these authoritarian, anti-democratic election deniers win their races. There is nothing ordinary about any of this. I don't know whether the voters understand the true implications of this election, and I'm not sure the media does either.

Read more

about the crucial 2022 midterms

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This election isn't about inflation or abortion. It's about whether democracy can survive - Salon

The recent riots in Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini, the twenty-two-year-old Kurdish woman murdered by the Islamic Republics chastity police, have unleashed a torrent of speculations about the regimes future.

Some observers have expressed hope that the widespread protests could result in a regime change. Others, pointing out the brutality of the theocracy and its successful history of suppressing previous unrest, are pessimistic. Some have claimed that even if the regime is repudiated, the future will not look any better because the Iranian people cannot sustain a democracy. The article Irans Empty Uprising, penned by Sohrab Ahmari, stands out in this context.

According to Ahmari, Iranians have a long history of unsuccessful attempts to implement democracy. He implies that much of this failure stems from a political culture where people need someone in authority to tell them what to do. As heput it, I fear what it might portend should it succeed because the Iranian society and political culture demands a living source of authority, making democracy unviable. Furthermore, Ahmari contends that Iran is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society where reaching a democratic consensus is impossible.

Ahmaris article is troublesome on different levels. First, it echoes Edward Saids claim that Western historians applied a Eurocentric perspective to the Middle East. This so-called Orientalist prism led them to believe that the region was too backward to nurture civilized values, including democracy. This view is doubly ironic because the author himself is from Iran.

Second, Ahmari seems to forget that the 1979 Islamic revolution was broad-based and produced a reasonably representative government under Mahdi Bazargan and then Abolhassan Banisadr. Sadly, the democratic impulse was snuffed by the Islamists who appropriated the revolution and brutally eliminated those who disagreed with them. As is well known, President Ebrahim Raisi was implicated in the murder of thousands of political prisoners in 1988. The highly respected international lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, who investigated the massacre, found it to be the second-worst violation of prisoners rights since the end of World War II, superseded only by the mass killing in Srebrenica, Bosnia, and Herzegovina.

Despite the personal dangers, there was a pushback from ordinary people who rebelled against their authoritarian religious rulers. Today, Iran has seen flourishing civic groups, something that was manifested in significant protest movements like the Green Movement in 2009, the environmentalist movement, and the human rights and womens rights movements. Public and intellectual discourse on social and political issues, such as the relationship between religion and state, state and civil society, and Irans future ideological orientation and identity, have also proliferated.

Third, Ahmari seems to believe that Irans multiethnicity dooms the country to disintegration. Essentially, this echoes the argument of the government, which invariably portrayed ethnic minorities (Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, Azeris) as separatists who threatened the integrity of the state. The reality has been very different. During the past four decades, not only have ethnic minorities been widely and grossly neglected, but they have suffered the brunt of the regimes repression. The governments discrimination in allocating public resources hit ethnic minorities particularly hard. It has massively diverted state resources away from Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, and Azeris to the Persian Shiite population. The unequal distribution of resources resulted in deep poverty in provinces home to ethnic minorities, far more profound than the level of poverty among other Iranians.

Ethnic minorities are not allowed to operate schools in their native language. Instead, they are forced to use Persian in all formal settings. Ethnic minorities have regularly been subject to ridicule in the official media, state-sponsored programs, and school textbooks.

The minorities have struggled to persuade the rulers in Tehran to treat them equally and end state oppression. Unlike many other minorities around the world, they have never adopted secessionism. What is more, the current round of upheaval has brought different ethnic and religious groups closer together.

Given the civic maturation of the society and the non-secessionist sentiments among the non-Farsi populations, it can be expected that Iran will adopt a secular nationalist identity as the principle of unity. This Iran-centric vision is the most vital source of orientation that can tie Irans multi-ethnic, multi-religious society together to live in harmony. It is characterized by a belief in popular sovereignty, democracy, the rule of law, and prioritizing national interest rather than pan-Islamic aspirations. This assumption is based on an April 2022 survey of Iranians by GAMANN, a reputable research foundation. The poll indicates a preference for a modified British-style constitutional democracy under Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late Shah, with 39 percent of the respondents expressing positive views about him. The survey also shows strong support for a democratically elected assembly, the parliament. The GAMANN opinion poll goes a long way toward answering Amaris question to the liberal opposition who would [you] have rule us. Ahmari knows that the prince is very popular but chooses to describe him as indolent and out of touch, apparently to press his theory that the uprising is empty.

The Iranian people desperately need the help of the international community, especially the United States, to continue their courageous fight. Expressing confidence in their ability to create a democracy would be the right step in this direction.

Moreover, Washington should have every incentive to support the Iranian people. For over four decades, the United States has been waiting for a moment when the population would cease to believe that America, the Great Satan, is their enemy. That moment is now; Iranian protesters are shouting, they are lying that our enemy is America; our enemy is right here. The Biden administration should seize the moment.

Farhad Rezaei is a Senior Fellow at Philos Project.

Image: Reuters.

Editors note: The original version of this piece incorrectly stated that 64 percent of respondents expressed positive views of the Prince Reza Pahlavi. The correct figure is 39 percent. We regret the error.

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The Iranian People Are Ready to Seize Democracy - The National Interest Online