The Religion of Democracy

By David K. Shipler 

                If America has a state religion, the historian Robert Kelley used to say, it is constitutional democracy. Among all the rancorous arguments across the American spectrum, no compelling bid to abandon the Constitution can be heard. No rhetorical attack on democracy is made. No threat to the nation, no fear of insecurity provokes such apostasy.

Even those who would undermine the Constitution, including the Capitol rioters, have acted in its name. Thus did Donald Trump’s appeals to “stop the steal” of the election intone the mantra of democracy, not the authoritarian rule he was attempting to install. Democracy was hailed by rioters who believed that they were fighting to defend it even as their insurrection moved to take it down.

That profound hypocrisy becomes less puzzling when Constitutional democracy is seen as religious. For religion can be perverted. It can be rationalized into destruction, as a world full of religious violence has witnessed. A creed can be selectively interpreted, twisted to fit parochial interests, and ignited as a call to arms. A religion’s righteous purity can be contaminated with hatred, which is then fueled by religion’s righteous certainty. No secular reasoning can rebut the divine inspiration, the holy cause. If it is for good, then that is good. But it is not always so.

American democracy is often elevated with religious language: “sacred,” “desecrate,” “temple.” Both sides in the Capitol invasion of January 6 used the terms. The lone police officer who tried to coax rioters out of the Senate chamber said gently, “Just want to let you guys know, this is the sacredest place.”

As the mobs roamed the halls searching for legislators to kidnap or kill, Trump tweeted, “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots. . . . Remember this day forever!”

 Once the Senate was taken back, Senator Dick Durbin declared on the floor: “This is a sacred place. But this sacred place was desecrated by a mob today on our watch. This temple to democracy was defiled by thugs, who roamed the halls — sat in that chair, Mr. Vice President — one that you vacated at 2:15 this afternoon.”

President Biden, in his inaugural address, hailed the survival of democracy against those who sought “to drive us from this sacred ground.”

Limiting Speech in a Free Country

                                                         By David K. Shipler 

                Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.                                                                                                                --The First Amendment 

                The First Amendment restricts what government may do, not what may be done by private entities such as Twitter and Facebook. So the internet platforms that have banned Donald Trump and many of his conspiracy-minded supporters do not run afoul of the Constitution. They are private companies, no more prohibited from silencing unwelcome viewpoints than any printed newspaper would be.

But American society needs to be careful about privately-imposed censorship—for that’s what it is, no matter how justified in the current state of emergency. As seen since 9/11, practices adopted to  counter threats can spill beyond the immediate risk, stifle diverse opinions, and outlast the period of danger. It’s a tricky balancing act to preserve freedom of speech and also contain wildfires of lies and verbal extremes that ignite violence.

The real conspiracies—not those fabricated but those organizing armed attacks—need communication to recruit and plan, so disrupting open lines of contact can impede them for a while. Yet in its quest for security against what might become a burgeoning insurgency, the country could harm itself. Extremist movements are already being driven underground to fester out of sight, elusive to law enforcement. If the parameters of acceptable debate are narrowed and marginal ideas are exiled from the public square, the society cannot be self-correcting. That depends on robust discussion across a broad spectrum, facilitated these days on the internet.

The map of free speech in the United States is defined by two overlays: fairly clear legal limits imposed by government on the one hand, and on the other, shifting boundaries drawn informally in the larger culture of peer groups, employers, news organizations, social media, and so on.

On the governmental level, the law’s limits on speech are so minimal, so distant from the places where most people go, that the landscape of freedom is probably the most expansive of any country in the world. It is very hard to break the law by merely speaking, although perhaps President Trump   managed when he fired up his supporters before some of them stormed the Capitol. 

The Democratic Party vs. the Anti-Democratic Party

                                                     By David K. Shipler 

                If Donald Trump were solely responsible for the whirlwind that the United States now reaps, his departure on January 20 would bring calm. But the wind was sown long before Trump and will blow a long time after. It gnaws away at beliefs essential to a free people, even as Americans take pride in their democracy’s survival through the latest Day of Infamy, Jan. 6, 2021.

                Notwithstanding the democratic-sounding platitudes by Republicans since the riots, their party has not favored true, open democracy, but rather a kind of semi-democracy at best. The Republican Party has conducted nationwide operations to prevent minorities and other likely Democratic voters from casting ballots, efforts now ramping up in some state legislatures poised to restrict the early and mail-in voting that broadened turnout last November. It has eagerly worn the mantle of racism inherited from Southern Democrats. Its assertions of fraud in the presidential election have mostly cited heavily Black cities. And it has become the gateway through which right-wing authoritarian movements are entering the political landscape.

                Trump is the facilitator and the current figurehead, the “accelerant,” as former President Obama has called him. But he could never have done it as a Democrat. It was among Republicans that he found resonance for his multiple hatreds and autocratic impulses.

                Yale history professor Timothy Snyder likens the Republican Party to authoritarian parties of Eastern Europe: Law and Justice in Poland and Fidesz in Hungary. Fascist methods, he notes, depend on a Big Lie, as in the claim of election fraud, and on faking election results, as Trump sought to do. “The people who stormed the Capitol building were fascists,” Snyder says.