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OPINION:

President Biden is running for reelection to save what he calls democracy from Caesar Augustus in waiting: former President Donald Trump.

Since Bidenomics is as popular as Dylan Mulvaneys commercials for Bud Light, the presidents reelection team aka the Suicide Squad has decided that the road to victory lies in convincing voters that the likely Republican nominee is a sinister figure who would transform the land of the free into a nation of storm troopers, stiff-arm salutes and tax reform.

Mr. Biden told a fundraiser in September, Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy.

American democracy is here defined as at least 8 million illegal aliens in the past three years, trillion-dollar deficits and a war on fossil fuels. Why, the ex-president and his MAGA brownshirts might even turn the Department of Justice and the FBI on his opponents and raid their homes.

How can you destroy what doesnt exist? America is not a democracy, though were moving in that direction at alarming speed.

We started as a republic with certain democratic features. In the purest sense, democracy means majority rule in all cases with no safeguards for the rights of minorities.

If America were a democracy, presidents would be elected by direct popular vote. They would not be limited to two terms but could die in office, as Franklin Roosevelt did.

Large and small states wouldnt have the same representation in the Senate. Nine appointed (that is, unelected) officials would not determine the meaning of the Constitution.

The federal government would work as well as California.

The Founding Fathers feared democracy, not because they were plutocrats in powdered wigs, but because they knew, as students of history, thatdemocracy never worked. Thats why the word democracy appears nowhere in our nations founding documents.

The Constitution speaks of establishing justice, ensuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense and promoting the general welfare, all of which have been degraded by the president and his party.

As we become more democratic, we become more dysfunctional.

A republic protects the rights of citizens. A democracy ignores them when its convenient, like gun control laws that violate the Second Amendment.

A democracy is spendthrift. A republic is frugal. A republic punishes criminals. A democracy punishes everyone else. A republic jealously guards our sovereignty. A democracy is happy to surrender it piecemeal to international bodies.

Democracy is a supersized government.

In a republic, holding public office is a trust, not a career. In a democracy, someone who is dumb as topsoil can be elected in a one-party state and spend decades in the most powerful deliberative body in the world and then ascend to the presidency.

President Woodrow Wilson got us into World War I to make the world safe for democracy. Look at how well that worked. We toppled monarchies to see them replaced by totalitarian regimes.

Democracy is about expanding the franchise to the point of absurdity. On Dec. 6, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts Democrat, introduced legislation to allow 16-year-olds and incarcerated citizens (felons in prison) to vote in federal elections.

If 16-year-olds have the wisdom and maturity to vote, why not 12-year-olds, especially with members of the teachers unions to guide them?

Who better to have a hand in making our laws than those convicted of repeatedly breaking our laws? Marxists who believe crime is caused by economic injustice can relate to incarcerated citizens.

The Democratic Party wants to see elections dominated by the clueless, like the 25% of college students who think the Holocaust is a myth.

Democracy is a con. Elites control the process and make the masses think theyre in charge.

When did we vote on President Bidens college debt forgiveness scheme, government paying for the genital mutilation of minors, open borders or international climate change initiatives that will send us reeling back to the Stone Age?

Democracy is the religion of the party that doesnt believe in God. Politicians like Mr. Biden and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer are its high priests.

Mr. Biden cant even quote the preamble to the Declaration of Independence correctly. During the 2020 campaign, the president declared: We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women are created by the, you know, you know, the thing.

Who better to lead a crusade to save democracy from The Donald and his MAGA meanies?

The best thing Mr. Biden could do for representative government would be to take a civics course after he resigns from office.

Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.

See the original post here:
Biden saving a democracy: The religion of a party that doesn't believe in God - Washington Times

Brookings Institute member and Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne proves once again how wrong leftist media can be: Democracy faces two threats. Trump is only one of them, published in the Aiken Standard on Nov. 29.

Those who claim Trump threatens democracy overestimate his power and underestimate the Constitution. As we learned in grade school (before they switched to DEI) our federal government has a system of checks and balances which our Founding Fathers well versed in tyranny made a cornerstone of federal government. Whoever wins in November will not be a threat to American democracy.

Dionne then jumps to the frequent Democratic battle cry of voting restrictions. Every citizen has and should have the right to vote but with proper documentation at a legitimate voting site. The next election and those in the future will be hampered by identification standards due to the unchecked migration of over 12 million illegal migrants. They should not be allowed to vote until they have been educated and processed as American citizens.

In the meantime, American democracy will soon reach its 250th anniversary. It is not an experiment. And the left should desist with claims that it is endangered.

James Haviland

Aiken

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Letter: U.S. democracy not in danger | Letters to the Editor | postandcourier.com - The Post and Courier

Our democracy is dying of internal rot

So many of our politicians are willing to corrupt the checks and balances aspects of our democracy to benefit themselves and their political party. Tactics include gerrymandering, voter suppression, even efforts to limit the courts' capacity to proclaim their laws unconstitutional.

What's more, former President Trump has revealed his intentions for a second term.

First, and perhaps most daunting, he and his closest allies have promised sweeping transformations of the federal government. They envision a presidency that would be endowed with new and unprecedented powers.

There is a plan to purge the federal workforce of anyone deemed disloyal.

The plan also includes the capacity to wield the power of federal law enforcement against political enemies.

The former president even went so far as to state that former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley should be executed.

Trump is a clear and present danger to our democracy. Not only are his plans reminiscent of the tactics used by numerous dictators, but he has also repeatedly praised the likes of Russias Vladimir Putin and North Koreas Kim Jong Un, saying they are very smart.

We cannot allow a second Trump presidency because he plans an autocracy instead of a representative republic guided by voters.

And the sad irony is that because authoritarians cant afford to have a populations of gun owners, almost immediately many of the day-to-day gun-owning MAGA boosters will lose their guns, their freedom or even their lives.

There will be no more voter rights. The free press will disappear. The right to free assembly to protest will be ripped away. We just must realize that what we are all headed toward is a full-fledged dictatorship.

Some, of course, will become the minions of the emerging fascist regime. They will be the white supremacists who followed the instructions to stand down and stand by.

Are you not interested in the dictatorship they are planning? Then, the time to act is now. The 2024 election is the crucial end point of our opportunity to end the current slide toward a Trump-led autocracy.

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The rest is here:
Our democracy is dying of internal rot - The Montana Standard

WASHINGTON, D.C. A Minnesota judge on Wednesday dismissed a right-wing lawsuit seeking to invalidate legislation that restores voting rights to over 55,000 Minnesotans on parole, probation or community release due to a felony conviction.

The conservative group behind the legal challenge Minnesota Voters Alliance sought to roll back the progress made by the historic rights restoration bill that was signed into law in March 2023.

Prior to the enactment of the legislation by the states Democratic-controlled Legislature, Minnesotans with felony convictions were permitted to regain their voting rights only after the completion of their entire sentences which often include years- or decades-long periods of probation.

Under the new legislation, Minnesotans voting rights are restored immediately after release from incarceration a practice that the Minnesota Voters Alliance lawsuit argued stood in direct violation of the Minnesota Constitution. According to the lawsuit, individuals on supervised release, probation, or work release because of a felony conviction have not been restored to all civil rights and are therefore ineligible to regain voting rights until they are fully discharged from their sentences.

In Wednesdays 11-page order, the judge presiding over the case rejected the conservative plaintiffs arguments. In addition to holding that the plaintiffs lack standing to bring their lawsuit, the judge flatly rebuffed the plaintiffs notion that individuals must regain all civil rights as a prerequisite to having their voting rights restored: The major premise of this argument is fundamentally flawedContrary to Petitioners argument, [the Minnesota Constitution], does not say restored to all civil rights. Instead, it says restored to civil rights.

The judge cited a February 2023 Minnesota Supreme Court opinion in which the majority upheld the states then-limited rights restoration scheme, but explicitly held that the Legislature has broad, general discretion to choose a mechanism for restoring the entitlement and permission to vote to persons convicted of a felony.

In response to Wednesdays decision, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) wrote in a statement yesterday that he is extremely pleased that yet another effort to undermine the voting rights of Minnesotans has been soundly rejected.

Ellisons statement continued: The legislature has the ability to decide when voting rights are restored to Minnesotans, and todays ruling reaffirms that right and reaffirms the constitutionality of the Restore the Vote Act. This is a good day for the 55,000 Minnesotans whove had their voting rights restored. Today is also a victory for democracy here in Minnesota because our democracy is always made stronger when more people participate.

The attorneys for the Minnesota Voters Alliance have already stated that they intend to appeal Wednesdays decision.

Read the opinion here.

Learn more about the case here.

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Minnesota Judge Dismisses Right-Wing Challenge to Voting Rights Restoration Law - Democracy Docket

Around the world, authoritarianism is ascendant and democracy is in decline.

A 2022 report from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance found that over the past six years, the number of countries moving toward authoritarianism is more than double the number moving toward democracy and that nearly half of the 173 countries assessed were experiencing declines in at least one metric of democracy.

The United States wasnt impervious to this trend. The report found that America was moderately backsliding on its democracy.

But I fear that were now on the precipice of fully turning away from democracy and toward a full embrace of authoritarianism. The country seems thirsty for it; many Americans appear to be inviting it.

Confidence in many of our major institutions including schools, big business, the news media is at or near its lowest point in the past half-century, in part because of the Donald Trump-led right-wing project to depress it. Indeed, according to a July Gallup report, Republicans confidence in 10 of the 16 institutions measured was lower than Democrats. Three institutions in which Republicans confidence exceeded Democrats were the Supreme Court, organized religion and the police.

And as people lose faith in these institutions many being central to maintaining the social contract that democracies offer they can lose faith in democracy itself. People then lose their fear of a candidate like Trump who tried to overturn the previous presidential election and recently said that if hes elected next time, he wont be a dictator, except for Day 1 when they believe democracy is already broken.

In fact, some welcome the prospect of breaking it completely and starting anew with something different, possibly a version of our political system from a time when it was less democratic before we expanded the pool of participants.

In Tim Albertas new book, The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, he explains that many evangelical Christians have developed, in the words of the rightist Southern Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress, an under siege mentality that has allowed them to embrace Trump, whose decadent curriculum vitae runs counter to many of their stated values. It allows them to employ Trump as muscle in their battle against a changing America.

This kind of thinking gives license or turns a blind eye to Trumps authoritarian impulses.

And while these authoritarian inklings may be more visible on the political right, they can also sneak in on the left.

You could also argue that President Biden, whose approval numbers are languishing, is being punished by some because he isnt an authoritarian and therefore isnt able to govern by fiat: Many of his initiatives voter protections, police reform, student loan forgiveness were blocked by conservatives. Could he have fought harder in some of these cases? I believe so. But in the end, legislation is the province of Congress; presidents are bound by constitutional constraints.

Trump surely appeals to those who want a president wholl simply bulldoze through that bureaucracy, or at least expresses contempt for it and is willing to threaten it.

Furthermore, Trumps chances will probably be helped by the portion of the electorate misjudging the very utility of voting. There are still too many citizens who think of a vote, particularly for president, as something to throw to a person they like rather than being cast for the candidate and party more likely to advance the policies they need.

And there are too many who think that a vote should be withheld from a more preferable candidate as punishment for not delivering every single thing on their wish lists that choosing not to vote at all is a sensible act of political protest rather than a relinquishing of control to others. Abstinence doesnt empower; it neuters.

If you want a democracy to thrive, the idea that voting is a choice is itself an illusion. Voting is about survival, and survival isnt a choice. Its an imperative. Its an instinct.

Its a tool one uses for self-advancement and self-preservation. Its an instrument you use to decrease chances of harm and increase chances of betterment. It is nave to use it solely to cosign an individuals character; not to say that character doesnt count it does but rather that its primacy is a fallacy.

Voting isnt just an expression of your worldview but also a manifestation of your insistence on safety and security.

And to top it off, as Democratic Representative Ro Khanna of California told me over the weekend, the Obama coalition that Biden will rely on in 2024 is under a lot of stress with the issue of the Israel-Hamas war, and that coalition can be mended by a foreign policy that is rooted in the recognition of human rights, which includes taking seriously the calls for a neutral cease-fire and the end to violence.

On Tuesday, Biden warned that Israel risks losing international support because of indiscriminate bombing, but he has yet to endorse a cease-fire.

With Republicans beaconing authoritarianism, and without an intact Obama coalition to thwart it, our democracy hangs by a thread.

Read more:
Opinion | America's Thirst for Authoritarianism - The New York Times