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Civility: we seek to instill it in our children and we expect it from even our most casual acquaintances. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA

Our constitution does not demand that our speech be civil. The constitution protects uncivil speech hate speech, even. But it does so not because our democracy approves of such speech, but because we believe that truth will expose lies and the evil of government censorship is greater than the perils posed by untoward speakers.

But what happens when the source of uncivil speech is not some fringe hate group, but the occupant of the Oval Office? And what happens when the lies target the very organs designed to ferret them out? We have never faced such questions before. Which explains why, on the 241st anniversary of our independence, American democracy finds itself in peril.

We have grown accustomed to the presidents lies, as recently inventoried in the New York Times. Yet such a simple enumeration fails to get at the danger. Consider Trumps workhorse that the mainstream media trucks in fake news.

If Trump were simply implying, without substantiation or proof, that the media routinely engages in unreliable reporting, this would be bad enough. But that is not the claim. Rather, it is that CNN, to take one favorite target, willfully fabricates false news to advance a partisan agenda.

The irony is rich, as the lie shamelessly attributes to CNN the very behavior that Trump himself is guilty of. Having maligned CNN as the enemy and not the vanguard of truth, the president minces no words about how enemies are to be treated. They are to be body-slammed to the floor and punched in the face.

Mr Trumps lies can better be understood as instances of libel they state falsehoods that malign their targets. As a sitting president, Mr Trump is, of course, immune from suit (just as he might be immune from indictment for having obstructed justice). But this does not change the libelous character of his speech.

What makes this libel so toxic is not the injury it does to the reputation of the New York Times or CNN, though certainly it may serve to discredit these organizations in the eyes of some segments of the public; it is the injury the comments do to our democracy.

But the full danger of Trumps uncivil speech becomes clear only when viewed through the filter of his defamation of our electoral process. The 2016 presidential election revealed genuine threats to the integrity of our voting system, and we have precise, reliable knowledge about their source.

But in his alarming testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the former FBI director James Comey revealed that while the president repeatedly asked whether the FBI had targeted him personally, he failed to express the slightest interest in the deeper issue Russias criminal tampering with our electoral process.

Instead, on his third day in office, Trump spread one of his most venomous lies: Between three million and five million illegal votes caused me to lose the popular vote. The president proceeded to bootstrap a bald lie into an alternative reality, establishing an independent commission to look into the nonexistent problem of voter fraud. Most recently, he has used the refusal of states to participate in this sham as evidence that they have something to hide turning lies into calumny.

Civility: we seek to instill it in our children and we expect it from even our most casual acquaintances. While a democracy can afford to tolerate some uncivil speech, it cannot withstand the sweeping cultivation of contempt directed against the institutions designed to keep government honest and elections safe.

This should be obvious to all public servants. And yet the present occupant of the White House has become the strident mouthpiece of uncivil speech that libels these very institutions.

Continued here:
The biggest threat to American democracy isn't Trump's uncivil speech - The Guardian

RESIDENTS OF ESSEX know that the fried clam was invented in 1916 at Woodmans, a much-loved clam shack that hugs the Essex River in its last approach to the sea. But few remember that one of our most essential words emerged around the corner. Just down Route 133, a weather-beaten sign on the First Congregational Church recalls John Wise, the minister who helped serve this small seaside community when it was known as Chebacco. In a small book published 300 years ago, in 1717, Wise gave a new urgency to a term that had never been acceptable in polite society, and which still gives us trouble. Democracy the word is so basic to our lives that we barely pause to hear it.

The story of democracy resembles an immigrants tale, though we rarely think about it that way. Like many newcomers, the word was first received with hostility, and took decades to assimilate. But now, its so much a part of our heritage that we cant envision ourselves without it. And its as New England as those fried clams.

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From high school civics classes to presidential speeches, democracy is simply everywhere, part of a soundtrack that always plays faintly in the background. Even North Korea, the least democratic country on earth, calls itself The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. As Leonard Cohen wrote in his song Democracy, the term is so prevalent that its coming through a hole in the air. But a close study reveals that the word, like the thing itself, is more fragile than we might think. Or as Leonard Cohen would say, its real, but it aint exactly there.

That sounds right for 2017, when democracy is something of an endangered species. Abroad, it is not in vogue, as authoritarians crack down in Turkey, Egypt, and the Philippines, and Europe reels from one crisis to the next. At home, President Trump uses the catchphrases of democracy less often than his predecessors.

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To some extent, that represents the obvious Democrats tend to like democracy more than Republicans. In Andrew Jacksons day, the Democratic party called itself The Democracy; Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both gave frequent seminars about how a healthy democracy functions, including the value of opposition parties, the rule of law, a thriving free press. It is difficult to imagine President Trump going there.

A century after a hard-fought confirmation battle, the story of the first Jewish Supreme Court justice holds a lesson for Merrick Garland.

But some impressive Republicans have embraced democracy notably, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush, who found democracy and freedom useful terms for what he was trying to build in Iraq. A new book by Condoleezza Rice, Bushs close adviser, manages to get both words into its title. Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom argues that the United States should not abandon the hard work of democracy abroad.

In fact, democracy has been contested for centuries, and New England furnished an early battleground. We love to quote John Winthrop in a way that makes him seem like a 20th century American; building a city upon a hill for all to see, a kind of theme park into which we can fit so much of what came later. But democracy was a term of reproach to the earliest Bostonians. John Cotton, spiritual leader to the first generation, wrote, Democracy, I do not conceive that ever God did ordain as a fit government either for church or commonwealth. Instead, responsible leaders were expected to emerge from a tightly-controlled network of ministers and magistrates, working in concert to suppress any unhealthy outbursts of popular feeling.

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But with time the old hierarchies gave way. In 1717, John Wise of Essex began to chip away at the authority of inherited ideas. Wise was not born into the Puritan elite the families, like the Mathers, that had dominated for decades. He was the son of an indentured servant who later became a butcher and a brewer Imbibe Wisely would have been a natural slogan for his product, if the Puritans had permitted advertising. When he went to Harvard, his father paid some of his tuition in malt.

But Wise did not feel especially inferior to the Mathers, or to anyone, and that helped him to argue in a new, more American language. He was a natural writer, with surprising wit for a Puritan. He was also commanding in person; of towering height, of great muscular power, stately and graceful in shape and movement; in his advancing years of an aspect most venerable. He grew up here, and when English officials began to impose new taxes and suppress dissent in the 1680s, he led a resistance. He was fined, jailed, and briefly stripped of his pulpit.

Such a figure was not likely to accept local intimidation either. In his rustic seat by the Essex River, he had grown steadily implacable, and when the Mathers tried a power grab, he was ready with a volley of verbal grapeshot. In 1717, he published A Vindication of the Government of New England Churches. On the surface, the book was about the way New England churches governed themselves, not electoral politics. But underneath, it was deeply political. Democracy is the theme of the book from start to finish; he uses the word often, like a cudgel, to club his opponents, and to argue that a church government that springs up from the people is better than one in which their betters make all the big decisions.

If Wises vocabulary was new; so was his reasoning, which drew not only from the Bible, but from the Light of Nature, and the Light of Reason phrases that were not so distant from the Enlightenment to come. To him, a human being was not quite as lost as the earliest Puritans had believed; but at the upper-end of Nature, a Creature of a very Noble Character, and therefore capable of self-government. In accents we would associate more with the end of the 18th century, he wrote, the end of all good government is to cultivate humanity, and promote the happiness of all, and the good of every man is all his Rights, his Life, Liberty, Estate, Honor, & without injury or abuse done to any. To this country parson, it was as plain as daylight that there was no Species of Government like a Democracy to attain this end.

Of course, 1717 was decades before independence, and Wise was not there yet. But when his book was republished in 1772, one of the subscribers was the future commander of the minutemen at Concord. It was republished again in 1860, at another moment when democracy seemed to be up for grabs. By that point, not many people remembered John Wise. But his distant voice, 300 years ago, helps explain one of the more remarkable transformations in our history the story of how Massachusetts steadily forged a new language of self-reliance. A single word, democracy, was the pivot.

Condoleezza Rice ends her book with a reflection on Winston Churchills witty line: democracy is the worst form of Government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. He made that remark in a parliamentary debate in 1947. In the same debate, Churchill cited Americas example, working out democracy over many generations, fine-tuning, self-correcting, oiling the works. Way back in our history, the son of an indentured servant spoke the word so loudly that it can still be heard, three centuries later, over the din of the diners ordering their fried clams.

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Democracy's immigrant story - The Boston Globe

China wouldnt have to make major structural changes to practice indirect democracy.

By Xiaochen Su for The Diplomat

July 04, 2017

During Chinese President Xi Jinpingfirst visit to Hong Kong, the political conflict surrounding democracy and sovereignty in the city has been highlighted time and time again. Followingwhat many Western media called the broken promise of direct democracy, the citys pan-democrats have grown more disillusioned with the slow pace of political reform. Seeing the central government in Beijing as a fundamental obstacle to the reforms, a growing number has come to the conclusion that the citys political independence is the only way forward for establishment of true democracy.

Yet it is rather simplified argument to say that democracy in Hong Kong is not movingforward because of Beijings opposition. The Communist Party of China (CPC)emphasizes the importance of democracy in various documents and does have institutions set up within the existing political structure that allow for direct popular elections. It is, then, important to reexamine why the brand of democracy espoused by the CPC falls short of Hong Kongs (and indeed, any Western) definition of the same political concept, and how the differing definitions can be better aligned.

Section 5 of the Constitution of the Peoples Republic of China stipulates a system of indirect democracy. Members of governing council (Peoples Congress) at the lowest level of political jurisdictions (including villages, towns, and counties, and urban districts) are to be directly elected by the general population. In turn, the members of the local Peoples Congress vote for municipal ones, who in turn vote for regional/provincial ones, who in turn select members for the national Peoples Congress that conveys in Beijing. Just as the National Peoples Congress holds power to confirm appointments of the executive leadership of the Politburo through all-member votes, the local and regional Congresses can do the same for selection of local mayors and governors.

What, in the eyes of Westerners, violates democratic principles, is the vetting of candidates before they are votedon by the common people.Chen An notes in his 1998 book on Chinese political reforms that candidates running for seats in the local Congresses must be nominated and receive explicit support before they can stand for elections. Given the outsized role played by the CPC in the Chinese party-state polity, it is unsurprising then that any potential candidate with views and ideologies different from the prevailing CPC ones will be filtered out at this stage. The vetting process, in essence, cements the CPCs monopoly over the countrys political establishment, reinforced through an existing democratic process.

Interestingly, the concept of vetting candidates before elections is exactly the same condition the central government proposed in 2014to Hong Kong as a condition for implementing universal suffrage. The pan-democrats rejection of this vetting sank perhaps the only possibility ofa smooth, Beijing-approved transition to universal suffrage and underscored the inherent difference between how the pan-democrats and Beijing understood democracy. Given the political reality of mainland China, the pan-democrats worry that vetted candidates will only include those from the pro-Beijing camp is highly reasonable and justified.

Thus, it can be said that the vetting of candidates is the primary point of contention separating China from Western-style democracy. It is commonly argued that Beijing insists on the vetting (in mainland China and Hong Kong alike) for the purpose of monopolizing power within the CPC and those politically friendly to the CPC. Not vetting candidates would quickly lead to erosion of CPCs political power as those from outside (and indeed, opposing) the party would become Congress members.

However, it is questionable whether suddenly stopping the vetting of candidates for local Congresses would rapidly alter the political balance in a manner unfavorable for the CPC. As the sole organized political institution in China for the past six decades, the CPC has acquired unwavering allegiance among millions who depend upon it, if only to get ahead in their own careers. Even if new political parties, unfettered by the CPC, were to form immediately tomorrow, it would take decades for them to match the organizational, financial, and communication powers the CPC presently has. The long time it would take for these political parties to maturewould provide more than enough time for the CPC to craft, adopt, and implement strategies that cement its dominant position in a more competitive political environment.

Furthermore, the fact that elections occur in a hierarchical, indirect manner in the current electoral institutions favors the incumbent party.Local elections focus on local issues of livelihood, which incumbent parties generally have much more political capital to resolve quickly and effectively. Even if the opposition wereto gain a majority in some local elections, their advantages in certain localities would quickly be eroded in regional and national elections if the majority of localities still favor the incumbent.

Without changes in the current political structure, even unvetted, popularly elected political leaders would be hamstrung by the CPC. The countrys dual party-state governance structure means political positions (such as governors) are subordinate to party positions (such as the regional party secretary). No matter how democratic the state governance structure becomes, it can face constraints in the face of an undemocratic party one. But given the credibility of state officials elected through a popular vote, it would be increasingly difficult for party officials to assert views opposite to those of state officials. Implementing indirect democracy without candidate vetting has the positive side effect of weakening the role of the party in the party-state structure over time, even without the need for significant structural changes.

Indeed, the primary benefit of implementing indirect democracy in China is how little political disruption it would cause in the process. All political institutions, with the exception of candidate nominations, would remain largely the same.

The result would be a true democracy that is beneficial for many reasons. The reform would be acceptable for the CPC, as its political dominance would not be immediately jeopardized inan indirect democracy. The ability to quickly execute long-term policy changes and grand projects, a benefit of the existing political structure that scholars like Tony Saich argueis at least partially responsible for Chinas recent economic rise, would largely remain intact. The indirect election of national leaders will alleviate the fear of a rise of nationalistic populism a la Donald Trump in the United States. Plus, the Western criticism is that China is not democratic can be better parried and refuted.

Those who have sought political changes in China, including scholars in the West and the Tiananmen leaders, have been too focused on overhauling the entire system in a top-down fashion. Understandably, such proposals draw the ire of the CPC and skepticism of a stability-minded Chinese populace. If the focus of reforms is instead bottom-up, starting with the abolishing of candidate vetting at local Congress elections, there is possibility of real changes that fit with the interests of all sides. Democratic-minded China-watchers in Hong Kong, mainland China, and elsewhere, should shift their strategies to demand more realistic, incremental reforms at the most grassroots level.

Xiaochen Su currently resides in Iringa, Tanzania, working for a NGO that helps smallholder farmers to increase productivity through provision of high-quality agricultural inputs and microcredit. Su previously studied International Political Economy at the London School of Economics.

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A Path to 'True' Indirect Democracy in China - The Diplomat

Lech Walesa, the man who helped bring down communism in eastern Europe, accused Polands government for breaching the constitution and backsliding on democracy and vowed to confront ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski in a protest next week.

A day before U.S. President Donald Trump visits Warsaw, Walesaand Wladyslaw Frasyniuk, a fellow leader of the Solidarity movement that helped topple the Iron Curtain, published a letter on the front page of newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. They said they needed to uphold democratic values that were being taken away by Kaczynskis Law & Justice Party.

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The former Solidarity leaders said they would join a July 10 protest along the route of a monthly procession led by Kaczynski to commemorate the 2010 plane crash in Smolensk, Russia that killed his brother, Lech, who was then president. The sit-in demonstration, led by a group called Citizens of the Republic of Poland, usually attracts several dozen people and has led to scuffles, with Frasyniuk carried away by police during the last march on June 10.

Were standing for basic civic freedoms and the right to assembly being taken away from us, Walesa and Frasyniuk wrote. On July 10, we the citizens will stand and face Jaroslaw Kaczynski to protect our rights.

The protest began after parliament passed a law that privileges recurring assemblies, a classification that includes the monthly procession Kaczynski leads. The measure bans other gatherings that may conflict with those that are protected.

The law is one of a string of measures enacted by the Law & Justice government led by Beata Szydlo that opposition leaders and some European Union countries have criticized as suppressing democratic rights. The EUs executive commission launched a probe last year into whether Poland is upholding the blocs values, its first-ever such inquiry.

Kaczynski, who wields the power behind Szydlos cabinet despite holding no government position, was once a close ally of Walesa. The two fell out in 1991when Walesa, who was serving as president, fired Kaczynski as his chief of staff, sending him into opposition for a decade.

Earlier this year, a national institute investigating communist files said Walesa was a paid, secret informant of Polands communist-era secret services. Walesa denied the claims as absurd.

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Walesa Vows to Confront Polish Ruling Party Chief Over Democracy ... - Bloomberg

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Im Amy Goodman. As we continue to look at how the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is embracing renewable energy, we turn to Scott Wallace and Ellen Dorsey of the Wallace Global Fund. The fund recently honored the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe with the inaugural Henry Wallace Award and a million-dollar investment in renewable energy projects, solar and wind, led by the tribe.

The award is named after Scott Wallaces grandfather, Henry Wallace, who served as vice president under Franklin Delano Roosevelt from 1941 to 1945. Scott Wallace recently wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times recalling his grandfathers piece back over 70 years ago. In 1944, Henry Wallace published an iconic op-ed in The New York Times headlined "The Danger of American Fascism." Henry Wallace wrote, quote, "American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact," unquote.

I began by asking Scott Wallace about his grandfathers comments in 1944.

SCOTT WALLACE: He described a breed of self-interested megalomaniac whothe notion of corporatism is what he described as a breed of fascism, which is the marriage of corporate power and government. And they pretend to be interested in democracy and the common people, but they are really only interested in preserving their own wealth and privilege.

And as you mentioned at the beginning, a defining characteristic of them that differentiates them from fascists that were then abroad in Germany and Italy was that they dont need violence. They dont kill people. They find that lying to the people is so much easier. So they use propaganda. They use the newspapers to spread lies and self-serving, what he called, snide suspicions without foundation in factas you mentioned, you know, birtherism, hugest inaugural crowd ever, 5 million people voted illegally, Obama wiretapped me. That is how they preserve their own power and ask for more.

And they alsohe defined it as using their position to obtain more money through the merger of corporate and government power. And Obama isI mean, sorry, Trump is that merger of corporate and government power. He uses it not only to pervert government policy toward personal ends, but he is now getting in trouble with the Emoluments Clause and receiving money from foreign governments, that the Founding Fathers said was an impeachable offense.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you feel that were moving toward fascism in this country? What do you think your grandfather would say?

SCOTT WALLACE: I think he would say, in retrospect, that were not talking about fascism in the way that is alarmist these days, that its not Hitler or Mussolini. Mussolini preferred the definition of corporatism, which is the merger of corporate and governmental power. Using that definition of fascism, yes, that is what my grandfather predicted. And I think the only thing that would shock him right now is that his prediction has come true.

AMY GOODMAN: When he ran for president in 1948, one of the barriers he broke is he traveled with African Americans through the South. Can you talk about the significance of this?

SCOTT WALLACE: Well, theres a wonderful story that was videotaped of Pete Seeger and Studs Terkel, who were with him on this tour, describing what animates this award that we gave yesterday to Standing Rock: courage. I mean, he refused to speak in front of a segregated audience in the Deep South. And Pete Seeger describes this scenario of the police coming to him and saying, "Mr. Wallace, you may not live through this week. There are threats against you." And my grandfather said, "Thats not important. Its important that I continue this tour."

And that standing up for what is right in the face of grave personal risk, thats what we saw in Standing Rock. Thats whatwhen we were thinking about how to honor my grandfather, how to incentivize that kind of courageous behavior and activism against overwhelming corporate and governmental power, thats why, oh, my god, Standing Rock is it.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, explain what youve done, because this is unusual in philanthropy today in the United States.

SCOTT WALLACE: Well, we created this award, the Henry A. Wallace Award, to honor that type of courageous activism against the merger of corporate and state power. We put a cash award with it. And this year, we decided, because they are also in search of a solution, a clean energy solution, which is very viable, wind and solar projectswe decided to not only give them a grant, an unrestricted prize for their activism and their resistance, but to invest with our assets, the 95 percent of our money that we dont give away every year but we invest to grow. We decided to put some of that into clean solar and wind projects, specifically run by and for the Standing Rock Tribe, to make an example that this is not only good for the planet, but its a way to make a decent return, too, which we find just shockingly ironic today as President Trump has withdrawn from the hugest global agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions, again, based on snide suspicions without foundation in fact, that, oh, my god, climate change is a Chinese hoax and fabrication. So, it all came together very nicely. And we want to also make the point that, no, renewable energy is the future, and you can make a nice return on it.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, this grant is both an outright grant of what? Like $250,000. But then, explain the rest of it.

SCOTT WALLACE: Well, we made a commitment of up to a million-dollar investment in the solar and wind projects that Standing Rock is developing with experienced project developers in the wind and solar space and that will empower the community, the tribe, and can provide a model for the rest of the country and the rest of the world.

Link:
Grandson of Former VP Henry A. Wallace on Standing Rock's Fossil-Free Future & American Fascism - Democracy Now!