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A living democracy depends on truth

Do you remember Richard Nixon, another former U.S. president who thought that the law didnt apply to him? Nixon authorized underhanded attacks on his rivals, including the famous Watergate break-in, even though he was far ahead in the polls. But, as you may also recall, Nixon was the only president to resign from the office.

The Republican senators and Congress members at that time were no more anxious to lose their partys president than the current members. But most of them were World War II veterans and they knew first-hand how unchecked dictatorial ambitions could destroy the world and they knew right from wrong. They were patriots the Greatest Generation and put their country above their party. They advised Richard Nixon to resign or be impeached.

Contrast that action with the dangerous way that the Republicans in the current Congress are acting lying about a fair election, lying about the seriousness of the pandemic and, in general, sowing hatred and discord in an attempt to keep one unqualified person in power. This is not patriotism. These people never saw war and if they have read our Constitution they certainly dont understand it.

A living democracy depends on truth and trust and a constant dedication to keeping it alive. Our rule by the people cannot stand on lies and division and guesses presented as facts. Please work to keep our way of life and our way of self-government strong and reject lying, hatred and division.

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Letter to the editor: A living democracy depends on truth - The Winchester Star

President Joe Biden speaks during the 59th Presidential Inauguration on Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

By Eric Genrich | mayor of Green Bay

This was a conversation I had with my son, Henry, before Joe Bidens victory last November:

Dad, if Joe Bidens elected, Im going to write him a letter and tell him that he should make America a democracy.

Thats a good idea, buddy.

Democracy is a good idea, and its worth fighting for, especially in the wake of the violent insurrection that recently besieged our nations Capitol building. This is my response to Henry, and it is my note of encouragement to him and to all who believe in the fight to make our country the democracy we are destined to achieve.

Democracy is something Im pretty familiar with as the mayor of Green Bay. Its a project to be engaged in at all levels of government, and its embrace everywhere is what my citizens are due. Without it we will be incapable of accomplishing what is necessary to improve the lives of our people in the fundamental ways that are so strikingly obvious to those of us on the ground floor of government.

My 10-year-old sons comments about democracy were related to his recent discovery of how the Electoral College elects our president. What he learned was upsetting to him, and for good reason. The anti-democratic elements of our government should be upsetting to everyone who believes in the principle of representative government, and the anti-democratic and violent actions of Donald Trumps supporters should embolden us to strengthen our democracy further.

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Eric Genrich: My son believes in democracy, and we should too here's how we can achieve it - Madison.com

Americas Founding Fathers were among the wealthiest people in the Colonies when they drafted and signed the Constitution, and thats pretty much who they expected to continue to guide the young nation.

It was never meant to be a sort of direct democracy,where all Americans would get to cast a ballot on all issues, says Andrew Wehrman, an associate professor of history at Central Michigan University. The vote itself,they thought,ought to be reserved for people of wealth and education, but they certainly didn't want to restrict all those other kinds of political participation.

Thefounders expected the common people, the poor and uneducated, to participate indirectly,through their local government, at town halls and meetings and through protest actions like boycotts.

Some of thefounders were particularly concerned about populism and mob rule.

These were the kinds[of people]that thought that democracy was a dirty word. Even John Adams said stuff like that. He didn't want poor people to vote, he didn't want women to vote, Wehrman says.

BruceKuklick, a professor of American history emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, says the framers of the Constitution had a very different idea of democracy than Americans do today.

Thefounders didn't want this sort of democracy at all. The Constitution is written so that citizenship rights are very, very limited, he says. They worried about democracy... It was a bad form of government because once you let everybody participate, then you're likely to elect a demagogue. You're likely to have people come to power who appeal to the frenzy of the masses. That idea is long gone.

Wehrman points out that the framers of the Constitution saw to it that only one part of one branch of the federal government, the House of Representatives, is popularly elected by the people. The Electoral College chooses the president, the commander in chief selects the Supreme Court justices and, originally, senators were selected by state legislatures.

It's another attempt to kind of whittle away at the direct participation of a large group of people in the political process, Kuklick says. Sothere are all these other constraints that they write into theConstitution to shore up what they think might be a leaky vessel,where too many ignorant,poor people get the right to vote.

It was only after the 1913 ratification of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution that U.S. senators were elected by direct popular vote.

Clearly, the Constitution was written and enacted to pull back some of the actions that were taken by state legislatures. People like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton thought that the state legislatures and voters in most states had gone too far, that too many people were participating in politics, too many people were voting, says Wehrman.

For example, New Jersey gave the right to vote to residents who could reach a certain property ownership threshold. This included women and African Americans,who were able to vote from 1776 until 1807, when the state restricted voting rights to white men.

They (thefounders) thought that there were too many voices in the state legislatures, that states were becoming too radical, that they were beholden to the interests of the common man,when they needed to be more reserved and more accommodating to wealthy, educated business-interest types, Wehrman says.

Sowhat would people like Alexander Hamilton, John Adams and the other framers of the Constitution think about America today?

I think they would all be sort of delighted that the general framework that they created is still in action, Wehrman says.

And they might even be open to change. After all, they did write in a process for changing or amending the Constitution. They even availed themselves of that process with the ratificationin 1804of the 12thAmendment,which established separate Electoral College votes for president and vice president. The tweakkeptpolitical adversaries from opposing parties from serving in the same administration as president and vice president.

Even so,Kuklicksays,the Founding Fathers would be considered reactionaries by todays standards.

[They]didn't want what came to be,Kuklicksays.And one of the amazing transformations of the United States in the 19th century is that we go from having this very, very limited view of participation by the people in the government, to the one that people just now completely accept as being the democratic way.

Although democracy in action today might not be exactly what thefounders envisioned, money and power do continue to play a vital role in U.S. politics. And, given thatthe vast majority ofAmerican presidents have been independently wealthy, thefounders aim of reserving a prominent place in government for the rich has essentially been realized.

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Todays Democracy Isnt Exactly What Wealthy US Founding Fathers Envisioned - Voice of America

What do the riots at the U.S. Capitol and their aftermath say about the extent of populism in the United States?

President Donald J. Trump is an authoritarian populist. And one of the key characteristics of populism lies in a leaders belief that they, and they alone, truly represent the people.

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That explains why Trump has kept clashing with democratic institutions over the course of his presidency. Whenever he ran up against the limits of his constitutional authority, he balked at the idea that somebody elsea judge, a bureaucrat, or a member of Congresscould tell him what to do. In his mind, only he had the right to speak for the country.

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This helps to make sense of the storming of the Capitol. On one hand, it was a terrible surprise. Before January 6, nobody had expected that a mob of insurrectionists could so easily enter the Peoples House. But on the other hand, it was a fitting end point for Trumps presidency: the mob was incited by the populist president of the United Statesand that president incited it to action because somebody who believes that he, and only he, represents the people could not possibly accept the legitimacy of an election he lost.

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The fact that Trump has been able to convince so many Americans of his lies about the election, and mobilize tens of thousands of them to protest against the certification of the vote, shows that a significant share of the population is now open to this kind of populist appeal. Faced with a choice between their president and the Constitution, they chose Trump. But it is also important not to cast the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol as the true face of the United States. A great majority of the population is horrified by these events.

The Republican Party now has significant commonalities with the parties of populist leaders across the world. Like Fidesz in Hungary or Law and Justice in Poland, for example, congressional Republicans have mostly stood by their leader as he attacked democratic norms and institutions over the past four years.

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There is, however, an important distinction that stems from differences in the nature of American political parties. In most developed democracies, party leaders have significant resources at their disposal and are formally or informally able to select parliamentary candidates. This makes it very hard for dissenters in the party to sustain themselves if they fall out with their leader. In the United States, however, parties have traditionally been very weak. Candidates for office are now chosen in primaries that are open to a wide variety of challengers. (This is, of course, how Trump came to lead the Republican Party in the first place).

As a result, Republican lawmakers have at some key moments proven more willing to stand up to their leader than have populist lawmakers in other countries. For example, it is striking that a great majority of Republican senators ultimately voted to certify President-Elect Joe Bidens victory.

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Whats more, populists such as Hungarian President Viktor Orban remained in control of their political parties even after they lost elections. The Republican Party, by contrast, now effectively enters a period without a real leader. We wont really know whether it will remain under Trumps control, instead of moving away from his authoritarian tendencies, until the next presidential primaries in 2024.

It is too early to tell how effective the suspension of Trumps accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms will be. It has certainly impeded his ability to speak directly to his followers over the coming weeks. But over the course of the next four years, he could adopt new ways of communicating with them.

At the same time, these decisions have also raised a number of risks. It is now imaginable that the internet will slowly break into two piecesor a whole chaotic array of shards. On Twitter and Facebook, Americans with different political beliefs sorted themselves into their own echo chambersbut at least shared the same platform. In the future, parts of the populist right will attempt to build platforms of their own. This could end up accelerating rather than slowing their radicalization.

The moves are also likely to empower dictators abroad. As opposition leaders such as Russias Alexey Navalny have warned, the suspensions provide a perfect excuse for oppressive governments to censor democratic challengers. If major political figures in the United States are banned from using social media platforms, the country will find it more difficult to condemn similar bans abroad even when they are pursued for much more cynical reasons.

Twitter and Facebook long ago became a kind of public square. Although speech rights are not absolute in any context, and incitement to violence should be illegal anywhere, it is concerning that a few powerful people in Silicon Valley can now effectively decide who gets to speak their mind in the public square. Handing the CEOs of Twitter and Facebook the ability to determine without any accountability which politicians do, and dont, retain the ability to speak to their followers is hardly a good precedent for American democracy.

As I describe in my book The People vs. Democracy, the rise of populism is owed to a number of structural reasons, including the stagnation of living standards for ordinary people, rapid cultural and demographic changes, and the rise of social media. The Biden administration should enact policies that, for example, help to stimulate wage growth for working- and middle-class Americans. But with Democrats small majority in the House and smallest possible majority in the Senate, the administrations ability to push through ambitious reforms will, at least for the next two years, be limited.

Just as important, then, is that Biden continues on the path that won him the Democratic primaries and allowed him to beat Trump. He needs to be clear and forthright in his condemnations of Trumps antidemocratic extremism. But he also needs to demonstrate that he seeks to be the president of all Americansinviting those who voted for Trump to abandon their allegiance to a dangerous demagogue without portraying them as irredeemable deplorables.

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After Trump, Is American Democracy Doomed by Populism? - Council on Foreign Relations

If the miscreants who stormed the Capitol Building last week can claim victory in anything, it's that they've created a fearful America.

The FBI believes that right-wing extremists are planning protests at the capitols of every state in the lead-up to President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration. One violent group even made a recon visit to the Minnesota Capitol in December to identify escape routes and sniper positions in the event of violence. Protests are expected in St. Paul on Saturday and Sunday.

On Wednesday, Gov. Tim Walz called out the state's National Guard to help protect the Capitol Building and citizens for several days. Walz told the Star Tribune the coordinated plan involves the National Guard, Department of Public Safety, Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, State Patrol, Department of Natural Resources and others.

The threat has become personal for Walz and other officials, many of whom have received death threats. Attorney General Keith Ellison said the threats have been enough to force him to change his lifestyle.

Walz said that for the first time in state history, the governor's mansion was evacuated due to threats. He described the State Patrol coming into the home and "removing my 14-year-old son to a safe location as hes crying, looking for his dog, wondering whats going on."

Walz said that the threats have had a chilling effect on lawmakers and staff, who might feel safe at the Capitol but are fearful coming to work or returning home.

"How did we get here, and how is this OK? Walz asked. "This is a horrific assault on democracy."

Similar fears have been shared by government officials throughout the country. Tensions were high in the wake of last week's violence, and Wednesday's impeachment of President Trump might stoke the furor.

The villains responsible for the violence feed on fear and intimidation, and we must not let the mob prevail. On Wednesday, Biden will be inaugurated, the result of a free and fair election.

Democracy will have the last say.

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Our View: Democracy will have the last say - PostBulletin.com