Surrender

Many posts have discussed war powers and the US military

"There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!... IRAN WILL HAVE A GREAT FUTURE. 'MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!).'” - President Donald J. Trump 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/H2HKkBVkww

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 6, 2026

Despite the brilliant performance of the US military in the war against Iran, Trump signed a memorandum of understanding that amounts to a surrender ... by the United States.

Mike Nelson at The Dispatch:

Finally, and shamefully, the agreement puts a final nail in the coffin of the Iranian people’s hopes that the United States would support their cries for freedom. “The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States undertake to respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs.” A conflict that started with the hopeful protests of a people pushing back against almost five decades of oppression ends with the country meant to be the beacon of freedom agreeing to turn a blind eye to the slaughter of 30,000 Iranians, or the inevitable continued crackdowns, executions, and repression. No matter how he wishes to run from it now, we should never forget the president’s undeniably clear messages to the Iranian people when he thought this would be easy—“help is on the way,” “the hour of your liberation is at hand.” Vance, already having shown his callous disregard for the deaths of Ukrainians, adds the Iranian people to the mix in his attempt to carry his boss’s water, “if the Iranian people want to rise up, great. That's their business. That's between them and their government.”

The conflict ends with a seeming disregard for the disposition of uranium we said we were fighting to secure, for the arsenal of missiles we said we were seeking to destroy, and for the oppressed Iranians we promised we were going to help. The war ends with nothing of value to show for it. We will have killed thousands of Iranians, destroyed hundreds of missile launchers and air defense systems, but to what end? For the privilege of achieving nothing quantifiable, we have provided Iran with proof of a strategic deterrent it can exercise at any time, provided the regime with access to a massive cash influx, rebuilt its relationship with proxies that was damaged after October 7, damaged our alliances and relationships, spent billions of dollars, expended a large percentage of our critically short precision munitions, and lost 13 American lives, to say nothing of the hundreds of wounded. As with so many of his missteps or failures, President Trump will likely try to categorize this as a win, shift the way it is remembered with the passage of time, blame someone else, or just hope it fades from memory as he moves on to what he deems truly important business, like ballrooms and reflecting pools. But this will likely be the largest and costliest error of his presidency, and one for which he deserves permanent shame.

International Perspectives on How Democracy Is Working

Many.posts have dealt with international perspectives.

 Jonathan Schulman and Richard Wike at Pew:

Around seven-in-ten U.S. adults (69%) say they are dissatisfied with the way democracy is working in their country. This share is higher than in most other high-income countries surveyed by Pew Research Center this spring.

Poll on America at 250

 Many posts have discussed patriotism and American exceptionalism.

GARY FIELDS, LINLEY SANDERS and NICHOLAS RICCARDI at AP:

The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research highlights many Americans’ feeling of unease over the future of its representative government — particularly among young people. It presents a jarring contrast as communities around the country commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary.

Only about one-quarter of Americans say the U.S. stands above all other countries in the world, the new poll found, while 44% say it’s one of the greatest countries in the world, along with some others. About 3 in 10 say there are better countries than the U.S., an increase from 19% in an AP-NORC poll conducted in June 2016.

Americans remain divided about whether diversity is an essential feature of the U.S.'s identity, and agreement about other aspects of the country’s underlying character appears to be eroding, the survey found. Americans are less likely to see a democratically elected government as “extremely” or “very” important to the United States’ identity as a nation than they were just a few years ago. About two-thirds of U.S. adults now say a democratically elected government is highly important to the U.S.’s identity as a nation, down from 80% in 2021.

...

Toung adults are much less likely than older Americans to believe the U.S. is special, compared with other nations, the poll found.

About 4 in 10, 44%, of U.S. adults under 30 say there are other countries better than the U.S., compared with 22% of U.S. adults ages 60 and older.

Fewer, too, see democracy as a key element of the U.S.’s identity. Only about half of Americans under 30 believe this, compared with 81% of those 60 and older.

Democratic Decline in 2025

Previous posts have discussed authoritarian moves by the executive branch.

Jonathan Schulman and Richard Wike at Pew:

The health of America’s democracy declined in 2025, according to new evaluations from organizations that have long tracked how well democracies around the world are working.

The assessments come as most Americans say democracy in the United States used to be a good example for other countries to follow but has not been in recent years, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. And roughly seven-in-ten Americans are dissatisfied with the way their democracy is working. (Read more below.)

The new ratings of America’s democracy come from three organizations:The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute surveys scholars and country experts to rate countries on elements of democracy including free and fair elections, checks and balances and civil rights.

Freedom House publishes the yearly Freedom in the World report, which rates countries on political rights and civil liberties and is based on the views of local experts.

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) publishes the annual Democracy Index, which rates countries on electoral processes, governance, civil liberties, political participation and political culture.

 

Democratic Backsliding

Previous posts have discussed authoritarian moves by the executive branch.

V-Dem  Institute:

Democratic backsliding is now happening in well-established democracies. Democracy in the USA is deteriorating at unprecedented speed, and media and journalists are increasingly targeted across the world. This, and more, is reported in the latest Democracy Report from the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg.

Nearly a quarter of the world’s nations are going through democratic backsliding, or autocratization, in 2025, and six out of the ten new autocratizing countries identified in the 2026 Democracy Report are in Europe and North America. Among them are large and influential countries like Italy, the United Kingdom, and the USA, according to the report authored by a team led by Professor Staffan I Lindberg at the V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg.

“The fact that many populous and economically powerful countries are autocratizing is especially worrying. Several of these countries have the economic and political weight to reshape international organizations, norms, and trade, effectively reshaping the global order. I think we are already seeing the effect of that,” says Staffan I Lindberg.
Three major trends in democratic backsliding

The report finds three clear patterns in the current trend of democratic backsliding. The first one is the democratic backsliding in some traditionally stable democracies; the second is significant reversals and often breakdown of democracy in countries that successfully democratized during the late 20th and early 21st centuries; and thirdly, the deepening of autocracy in already autocratic states.

Freedom of Expression, a core aspect of democracy, shows the most drastic global decline, and is the most common target among autocratizing leaders over the past 25 years.

“The second most common target are the liberal aspects of democracy, like rule of law, and checks and balances that prevent the abuse of powers, which are deteriorating in a worrying number of countries. For example, rule of law is deteriorating in 22 countries, including the USA,” says Staffan I Lindberg.
Democracy in the USA deteriorating at unprecedented scale and speed

The U.S. democracy is currently in a much faster deterioration process than any other democracy in modern times. Within only one year, the USA’s score on the V-Dem Liberal Democracy index has declined by 24 percent, while its world rank dropped from 20th to 51st place out of 179 nations.

The liberal aspects of democracy show the largest decline in the U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term can be summarized as a rapid concentration of powers in the presidency, according to the report.

“The current U.S. administration has been undercutting institutionalized checks and balances, politicizing civil service and oversight bodies, and intimidating the judiciary, alongside attacks on the press, academia, civil liberties, and dissenting voices ”says Staffan I Lindberg.

Since election specific indicators are only evaluated during national election years, there has not been a change in those indicators in 2025 for the U.S.

“The 2026 American midterm elections will be a critical test for the quality of elections, and democracy, in the United States. If election indicators also decline, the U.S. will fall even further,” says Staffan I Lindberg.
The democratizers

On a more positive note, the report shows that 18 nations worldwide (10 percent) are currently democratizing, with large countries such as Brazil and Poland continuing their democratization processes. In the majority of these countries, media freedom is improved. Botswana, Guatemala, and Mauritius are the three new democratizing countries identified in the 2025 data.



Download the V-Dem Institute Democracy Report 2026: “Unraveling the Democratic Era?”

Contact Lead author: Professor Staffan I. Lindberg, sil@v-dem.net.

"Democracy is a system in which parties lose elections."

Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America

In his opening speech to the Constituent Assembly, Adolfo Suárez, the prime minister of the Spanish transition to democracy, announced that henceforth “the future is not written, because only the people can write it” (Verou 1976). Heralding this plunge into the unknown, he caught two quintessential features of democracy: Outcomes of the democratic process are uncertain, indeterminate ex ante; and it is “the people,” political forces competing to promote their interests and values, who determine what these outcomes will be.

Democracy is a system in which parties lose elections. There are parties: divisions of interests, values, and opinions. There is competition, organized by rules. And there are periodic winners and losers. Obviously not all democracies are the same; one can list innumerable variations and distinguish several types of democratic institutions. Yet beneath all the institutional diversity, one elementary feature – contestation open to participation (Dahl 1971) – is sufficient to identify a political system as democratic.

Democracy is, as Linz (1984) put it, government pro tempore. Conflicts are regularly terminated under established rules. They are “terminated” (Coser 1959), temporarily suspended, rather than resolved definitively. Elections fill offices, legislatures establish rules, bureaucracies issue decisions, associations arrive at agreements, courts adjudicate conflicts, and these outcomes are binding until and unless they are altered according to rules. At the same time, all such outcomes are temporary, since losers do not forfeit the right to compete in elections, negotiate again, influence legislation, pressure the bureaucracy, or seek recourse to courts.

Viewing With Alarm

 J. Andrew Sinclair and Kenneth Miller report on the new Rose Institute poll:

American voters view the upcoming election with alarm. Nearly half of registered voters (47%) view the election of former President Trump as a threat to democracy, while 38% view Harris the same way–with fears mostly dividing along partisan lines. Voters who see both candidates as a threat to democracy (5%) tend to prefer third-party candidates or remain undecided. 

Only 10% of respondents view neither candidate as a threat to democracy. This view is more common among Trump supporters than Harris supporters, and partly explains the difference between responses to this question and the question on candidate preference.

 Overall, one thing most voters can agree on is that the stakes in this election are high.

The Founding and Its Enemies

Many posts have discussed the Founding.

Robert Kagan at WP:

Before the American Revolution no government had ever been founded on liberal principles, and the vast majority of human beings had never believed in these natural rights — certainly not the Christian church in either its Protestant or Roman Catholic versions nor Islam nor Judaism nor Hinduism nor Buddhism. People might be equal in the eyes of their god, but no government or religious institution had ever been based on the principle of equal rights. Not even the English system was based on this principle but rather on monarchy, a ruling aristocracy, and a contract between crown and subjects that was modified over the centuries but was not based on the principle of universal “natural” rights.

The Founders knew these ideas were radical, that they were inaugurating, in their own words, a novus ordo seclorum — a new order of the ages — that required a new way of thinking and acting. They knew, as well, that their own practices and those of 18th-century American society did not conform to their new revolutionary doctrines. They knew that slavery was contrary to the Declaration’s principles, though they permitted slavery to continue, hoping it would die a natural death. They knew that established churches were contrary to those principles because they impinged on that most important of rights, “freedom of conscience,” which was vital to the preservation of liberty, yet a number of states in the 18th and 19th centuries retained all kinds of religious tests for office. In short, they knew that a great many Americans did not in fact believe in the liberal principles of the Revolution. As Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, put it, “We have changed our forms of government, but it remains yet to effect a revolution in our principles, opinions and manners so as to accommodate them to the forms of government we have adopted.” They did not insist that citizens believe in those principles. One could be an American citizen whether one believed in the Declaration or not.

And a great many did not. Leaders of the slaveholding South called the Declaration “a most pernicious falsehood.” South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun called the very idea of equal rights a “false doctrine.” They believed in democracy, but only if it was an exclusively White democracy. When democracy turned against them in 1860, they rebelled and sought an exit from the system. That rebellion never ended. It has been weakened, suppressed — sometimes by force — and driven underground, but it has never gone away. Although the South was militarily defeated and deprived of its special advantages in the Constitution, its hostility to the Founders’ liberalism did not abate. As Southern writer W.J. Cash observed in 1941, if the war had “smashed the southern world,” it had nevertheless “left the essential southern mind and will … entirely unshaken” and Southerners themselves determined “to hold fast to their own, to maintain their divergences, to remain what they had been and were.” In 1956, almost a century after the Civil War, a fifth of Congress, almost all Democrats — signed the “Southern Manifesto” calling on states to refuse to obey the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision to end segregation in public schools. Nothing had changed. Are we so surprised that for many Americans, nothing has changed even today?

Nor has anti-liberalism only been about race. For more than a century after the Revolution, many if not most White Anglo-Saxon Protestants insisted that America was a Protestant nation. They did not believe Catholics possessed equal rights or should be treated as equals. The influential “second” Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s was anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish as well as anti-Black, which was why, unlike the original Klan, it flourished outside the South. Many regard today’s Christian nationalism as a fringe movement, but it has been a powerful and often dominant force throughout America’s history.

Civic Virtue

Many posts have discussed volunteering and civic virtue.

Brooks, Arthur C. "America's Crisis of Civic Virtue." Journal of Democracy 35, no. 2 (2024): 23-39. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2024.a922831.

Civic virtue is the set of personal qualities associated with a civil or political order. It is a shared set of behavioral norms and basic moral rules that make the order's functioning possible. Tocqueville believed that this undergirded the American experiment with democracy and free enterprise, which could not be guaranteed by laws and coercion, but  only by voluntary adherence to virtuous behaviors such as honesty and civility.9

Some of the Founders doubted whether ordinary Americans possessed sufficient civic virtue for democratic self-government. In January 1776, six months before independence was declared, John Adams wrote fretfully to Mercy Otis Warren that "there is So much Rascallity, so much Venality and Corruption, so much Avarice and Ambition, such a Rage for Profit and Commerce among all Ranks and Degrees of Men even in America, that I sometimes doubt whether there is public Virtue enough to support a Republic."10 In 1788, James Madison agreed that a lack of civic virtue would doom the republic: "To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea."11 He believed, however, that ordinary Americans were sufficiently wise and virtuous to use the democratic system to choose good leaders, for immediately after uttering these words, he added: "If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend upon their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them."

Civic virtue promotes trust within a society; then we can be confident that outward honesty and civility will be reciprocated by others. This trust is akin to what Robert Putnam famously called "social capital" in this journal in 1995.12 Social capital comes in two forms: bonding and bridging. The former creates solidarity and trust between people who are alike based on a shared identity (the in-group), but not with those who do not share this identity (the out-group). While bonding social capital can create a strong sense of belonging, it does not necessarily foster public trust due to its tendency to foster an "us-versus-them" mentality. By contrast, bridging social capital acts like a glue that holds differing groups together, thus breaking down barriers and fostering trust between people who are not alike.

As political theorist Kevin Vallier notes, trust through bridging social capital takes several forms—social, legal, and political. Social trust refers to the confidence we have that our fellow citizens will generally not take advantage of us.13 This refers to friends and family, of course, but also to strangers in the marketplace. Legal trust refers to institutions such as law enforcement and the courts. Political trust is placed in government officials, elected and nonelected, who are assumed not to use their special access to power to enrich themselves and their friends, or to disadvantage their enemies.

Francis Fukuyama argues that the trust instantiated in social capital (especially bridging capital), mediated by civic virtue, makes voluntary exchange and democratic governance possible.14 When people trust others—even strangers—to be fundamentally honest and civil, they feel more free to carry out economic transactions with reasonable confidence, and can take part in elections with similar confidence that the voting will not be rigged.

This, scholars have found, can initiate a virtuous cycle in which trust in others' virtue stimulates market exchange and democracy, which in turn raise trust. This cycle then raises societal well-being overall. Research by Sonja Zmerli and Ken Newton shows that when markets are backed by property rights, and when social norms encourage mutually beneficial exchanges among strangers, general trust grows.15 In addition, well-functioning markets make corruption less attractive by opening a path to wealth that is more lucrative, and less risky, than efforts to get rich by abusing public office.

The idea that trust promotes capitalism, which in turn further raises trust, is supported by empirical evidence. Analyzing data gathered from eighty countries during the years 1990 through 2020, economist Johan Graafland finds that: 1) civic virtues of honesty and civility reinforce free markets and vice-versa; 2) trust lies behind civic virtues, the rule of law, and thus democracy; 3) civic virtues are positively related to citizens' feelings of life satisfaction; and 4) the rule of law increases well-being by means of trust and civic virtues.16

Democracy Attitudes: Dissatisfaction and Hypocrisy

Jeffrey M. Jones at Gallup:

A new low of 28% of U.S. adults are satisfied with the way democracy is working in the country. The current figure is down from the prior low -- 35% measured shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by rioters trying to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

Joe Goldman, Lee Drutman, and Oscar Pocasangre “Democracy Hypocrisy: Examining America's Fragile Democratic Convictions”.Democracy Fund, January 4, 2024.

• While the vast majority of Americans claim to support democracy (more than 80 percent say democracy is a fairly or very good political system in surveys from 2017 to 2022), fewer than half consistently and uniformly support democratic norms across multiple surveys over the past seven years.
• Support for democratic norms softens considerably when they conflict with partisanship. For example, a solid majority of Trump and Biden supporters who reject the idea of a “strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress and elections” nonetheless believe their preferred U.S. president would be justified to take unilateral action without explicit constitutional authority under several different scenarios.
• Only about 27 percent of Americans consistently and uniformly support democratic norms in a battery of questions across multiple survey waves, including 45% of Democrats, 13% of Republicans, and 18% of Independents. When adding responses to hypothetical scenarios about unilateral action by the president, the share of Americans who consistently supports democratic norms over this time period drops to just 8 percent, including 10% of Democrats, 5% of Republicans, and 11% of Independents.
• On the other hand, the portion of the public who are consistently authoritarian — Americans who consistently justify political violence or support alternatives to democracy over multiple survey waves — is also relatively small (8 percent). This leaves most Americans somewhere between consistent democratic and authoritarian leanings, a position often heavily shaped by partisanship.
• When looking at the exact same respondents over time, Republicans have the highest levels of inconsistency. While 92 percent of Republicans supported congressional oversight during the Biden administration in 2022, only 65 percent supported oversight during the Trump administration in 2019 (a 27-point swing). While 85 percent are supportive of media scrutiny during the Biden administration, only 63 percent were supportive during the Trump administration (a 22-point swing). This contrasts with a 6 percentage point difference for Democrats in their views between the Biden and Trump administrations on these questions.
• Among the 81 percent of Republicans who believed in September 2020 that it is important for the loser to acknowledge the winner of the election, 62 percent rejected Biden as the legitimate president after the election, 53 percent said it was appropriate for Trump to never concede the election, 87 percent thought it is appropriate for Trump to challenge the results of the election with lawsuits, and 43 percent approved of Republican legislators reassigning votes to Trump. Republicans who exhibit higher levels of affective polarization were the most resistant to accepting an electoral loss.
• In contrast to an overwhelming and consistent rejection of political violence across four survey waves, the violent events of January 6, 2021, were viewed favorably by Republicans. Almost half of Republicans (46%) described these events as acts of patriotism and 72 percent disapproved of the House Select Committee that was formed to investigate them.

Speaker Mike Johnson

Mike Johnson (R-LA) has become speaker of the House. His inaugural speech mentioned religion and the Declaration.

Newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA): "Scripture, the Bible, is very clear: God is the one that raises up those in authority. All of us ... [Marxism and Communism] begin with the premise that there is no God." pic.twitter.com/VCh4kKHdQC

— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) October 25, 2023

The republic, not a democracy thing and the separation of church and state

Mike Johnson in 2016: "What’s happened, Alex, over the last 60 or 70 years, is that our generation has been convinced that there is a separation of church and state. Most people think that that’s part of the Constitution, but it’s not.”

(It is: See The Establishment Clause). pic.twitter.com/yP0vsl7rC1

— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman) October 26, 2023

January 6: Seditious Conspiracy, Domestic Terrorism, Treason

 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURTFOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIAUNITED STATES OF AMERICA v.ELMER STEWART RHODES III,KELLY MEGGS,KENNETH HARRELSON,JESSICA WATKINS,ROBERTO MINUTA,JOSEPH HACKETT,DAVID MOERSCHEL,THOMAS CALDWELL, andEDWARD VALLEJO, Defendants.Case No. 22-cr-15-APMGOVERNMENT’S OMNIBUS SENTENCING MEMORANDUM ANDMOTION FOR UPWARD DEPARTURE

These defendants were prepared to fight. Not for their country, but against it. In their own words, they were “willing to die” in a “guerilla war” to achieve their goal of halting the transfer of power after the 2020 Presidential Election. As a co-conspirator recognized, their actions made these defendants “traitors.”

Using their positions of prominence within, and in affiliation with, the Oath Keepers organization, these defendants played a central and damning role in opposing by force the government of the United States, breaking the solemn oath many of them swore as members of the United States Armed Forces. To support their operation, they amassed an arsenal of firearms across the Potomac River and led a conspiracy that culminated in a mob’s attack on the United States Capitol while our elected representatives met in a Joint Session of Congress. Two juries found all nine defendants guilty of participating in this grave conduct. These defendants are unlike any of the hundreds of others who have been sentenced for their roles in the attack on the Capitol. Each defendant therefore deserves a significant sentence of incarceration.

...

 “[T]he violent breach of the Capitol on January 6 was a grave danger to our democracy.” United States v. Munchel, 991 F.3d 1273, 1284 (D.C. Cir. 2021). “The chaos wrought by the mob forced members of Congress to stop the certification and flee for safety.” United States v. Fischer, 64 F.4th 329, 332 (D.C. Cir. 2023). As this Court has explained:

January 6, 2021 was supposed to mark the peaceful transition of power. It had been that way for over two centuries, one presidential administration handing off peacefully to the next. President Ronald Reagan in his first inaugural address described “the orderly transfer of authority” as “nothing less than a miracle.” Violence and disruption happened in other countries, but not here. This is the United States of America, and it could never happen to our democracy. Thompson v. Trump, 590 F. Supp. 3d 46, 61 (D.D.C. 2022) (footnote omitted).

But, because of these defendants’ actions, it did happen to our democracy. Rioters injured more than a hundred members of law enforcement and inflicted significant emotional injuries on law enforcement officers and Capitol employees alike. The attack caused substantial damage to the Capitol, resulting in millions of dollars of financial losses. But the cost to our democracy and system of government was incalculable. See United States v. Gardner, No. 21-cr-622 (Mar. 16, 2023), Sent. Tr. at 68 (identifying one of the “victims” on January 6 as “democracy itself”)

...

 In short, the defendants’ conduct displayed a clear, shared intent to stop Congress from certifying the results of the election, including through the organized use of force and the staging of weapons nearby. That conduct—calculated to stop the peaceful transfer of Presidential power for the first time in the nation’s history—is a quintessential example of an intent to influence government conduct through intimidation or coercion and warrants an upward departure pursuant to Note 4. Indeed, the terrorism enhancement in Section 3A1.4 is meant to “punish[] more harshly than other criminals those whose wrongs served an end more terrible than other crimes.” Benkahla, 530 F.3d at 313

Impact of Social Media: International Opinion

Richard Wike and colleagues at Pew:

As people across the globe have increasingly turned to Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and other platforms to get their news and express their opinions, the sphere of social media has become a new public space for discussing – and often arguing bitterly – about political and social issues. And in the mind of many analysts, social media is one of the major reasons for the declining health of democracy in nations around the world.

However, as a new Pew Research Center survey of 19 advanced economies shows, ordinary citizens see social media as both a constructive and destructive component of political life, and overall most believe it has actually had a positive impact on democracy. Across the countries polled, a median of 57% say social media has been more of a good thing for their democracy, with 35% saying it is has been a bad thing.

There are substantial cross-national differences on this question, however, and the United States is a clear outlier: Just 34% of U.S. adults think social media has been good for democracy, while 64% say it has had a bad impact. In fact, the U.S. is an outlier on a number of measures, with larger shares of Americans seeing social media as divisive.

Even in countries where assessments of social media’s impact are largely positive, most believe it has had some pernicious effects – in particular, it has led to manipulation and division within societies. A median of 84% across the 19 countries surveyed believe access to the internet and social media have made people easier to manipulate with false information and rumors. A recent analysis of the same survey shows that a median of 70% across the 19 nations consider the spread of false information online to be a major threat, second only to climate change on a list of global threats.

Authoritiarians

Marc Fisher at WP:

Though hardly a champion of democracy, Russian President Vladimir Putin late last month delivered an address that would sound familiar — and, to many people, attractive — in democracies from the United States to much of Europe. Putin railed against expansive definitions of gender, calling the idea a “perversion,” part of a “complete denial of man [and an] overthrow of faith and traditional values” by “Western elites.”

... 

Recent years have brought a sharp reaction in many parts of the world, as globalization, political polarization, the rise of social media and a collapse of trust in major institutions have left many people feeling betrayed by their governments, torn apart from their careers and alone in their communities, according to historians, political scientists and sociologists who have studied these shifts in the world’s economies and governments.

The result has been a similar quest for nationalist solutions in country after country, and a growing bond among the far-right autocrats in those places. For example, Hungary’s prime minister, Victor Orban, and Italy’s likely new prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, have spoken to acclaim at gatherings of the Conservative Political Action Coalition — a group that has helped propel Trump’s movement in the United States.

“The trend we are seeing reflects a disillusionment around the world that the democratic process fails to produce effective, charismatic leaders,” said Nikolas Gvosdev, a professor of national security studies at the U.S. Naval War College. “In country after country, the idea spreads that we need strong leaders who get things done. And it’s not just in politics: We see the valorization of tech CEOs like Elon Musk as problem solvers who get the job done.”

...

 What the authoritarian regimes have in common is their roots in what Moisés Naím, a former Venezuelan cabinet minister who is now a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, calls the three P’s: populism, polarization and post-truth

Threats to Democracy

David Leonhardt at NYT identifies election denialism as one threat to American democracy.

“There is the possibility, for the first time in American history, that a legitimately elected president will not be able to take office,” said Yascha Mounk, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University who studies democracy.

The second threat to democracy is chronic but also growing: The power to set government policy is becoming increasingly disconnected from public opinion.

The run of recent Supreme Court decisions — both sweeping and, according to polls, unpopular — highlight this disconnect. Although the Democratic Party has won the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections, a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees seems poised to shape American politics for years, if not decades. And the court is only one of the means through which policy outcomes are becoming less closely tied to the popular will.

Two of the past four presidents have taken office despite losing the popular vote. Senators representing a majority of Americans are often unable to pass bills, partly because of the increasing use of the filibuster. Even the House, intended as the branch of the government that most reflects the popular will, does not always do so, because of the way districts are drawn.

“We are far and away the most countermajoritarian democracy in the world,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University and a co-author of the book “How Democracies Die,” with Daniel Ziblatt.

Bipartisan Anti-Democratic Sentiment

David Nather and Margaret Talev at Axios:

About one in three Americans prefers strong unelected leaders to weak elected leaders and says presidents should be able to remove judges over their decisions, according to the latest findings from our Axios-Ipsos Two Americas Index.

Why it matters: The findings from this poll shatter the myth that Americans overwhelmingly agree on a common set of democratic values around checks and balances on elected leaders, protection of minority rights and freedom of speech.They're also a reality check against President Biden's speech that portrayed threats to democracy as solely driven by Republican supporters of former President Trump who refuse to accept that he lost the 2020 election.

What we're watching:

• In this poll, significant minorities of Republicans and Democrats supported non-democratic norms in about equal percentages — and Democrats were more likely than Republicans to say presidents should be able to remove judges when their decisions go against the national interest.Many Americans also believe the government should follow the will of the majority even at the expense of ethnic and religious minority groups' civil rights.
• And roughly a third said the federal government should be able to prosecute members of the news media who make offensive or unpatriotic statements.
• Respondents younger than 35 or with household incomes below $75,000 a year were more likely to favor strong unelected leaders and to support prosecuting the media or empowering presidents to remove judges.

Republic and Democracy

 Ron Elving at NPR:

Robert Draper of The New York Times published a piece on Republicans who say this in August. He cited a GOP candidate for the Arizona state legislature, Selina Bliss, saying: "We are not a democracy. Nowhere in the Constitution does it use the word 'democracy.' I think of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That's not us."

But a democratic republic is us. Exactly.

Throughout our history we have functioned as both. Put another way, we have utilized characteristics of both. The people decide, but they do so through elected representatives working in pre-established, rule-bound and intentionally balky institutions such as Congress and the courts.

The government seated in Washington, D.C., represents a democratic republic, which governs a federated union of states, each of which in turn has its own democratic-republican government for its jurisdiction.

The relationship between the democratic and republican elements of this equation has been a dynamic and essential part of our history. But it has not always been easy, and in our time the friction between them has become yet another flashpoint in our partisan wars.

Despair About Democracy

 Andrew Romano at Yahoo:

A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that most Democrats (55%) and Republicans (53%) now believe it is “likely” that America will “cease to be a democracy in the future” — a stunning expression of bipartisan despair about the direction of the country.

Half of all Americans (49%) express the same sentiment when independents and those who do not declare any political affiliation are factored in, while just a quarter (25%) consider the end of U.S. democracy unlikely and another quarter (25%) say they’re unsure.

...

When asked to choose the phrase that best “describes most people on the other side of the political aisle from you,” a majority of Republicans pick extreme negatives such as “out of touch with reality” (30%), a “threat to America” (25%), “immoral” (8%) and a “threat to me personally” (4%). A tiny fraction select more sympathetic phrases such as “well-meaning” (4%) or “not that different from me” (6%).

The results among Democrats are nearly identical, with negatives such as “out of touch with reality” (27%), a “threat to America” (23%), “immoral” (7%) and a “threat to me personally” (4%) vastly outnumbering positives such as “well-meaning” (7%) or “not that different from me” (5%).

Meanwhile, the number of Trump and Biden voters who say the other side is primarily a threat to America (28% and 25%, respectively) is double the number who say the other side is primarily “wrong about policy” (14% and 13%).

Reagan at Westminster

 Forty years ago today, President Reagan spoke to the British Parliament:

No, democracy is not a fragile flower. Still it needs cultivating. If the rest of this century is to witness the gradual growth of freedom and democratic ideals, we must take actions to assist the campaign for democracy.

...

The objective I propose is quite simple to state: to foster the infrastructure of democracy, the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities, which allows a people to choose their own way to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means.

This is not cultural imperialism, it is providing the means for genuine self-determination and protection for diversity. Democracy already flourishes in countries with very different cultures and historical experiences. It would be cultural condescension, or worse, to say that any people prefer dictatorship to democracy. Who would voluntarily choose not to have the right to vote, decide to purchase government propaganda handouts instead of independent newspapers, prefer government to worker-controlled unions, opt for land to be owned by the state instead of those who till it, want government repression of religious liberty, a single political party instead of a free choice, a rigid cultural orthodoxy instead of democratic tolerance and diversity?

...

During the dark days of the Second World War, when this island was incandescent with courage, Winston Churchill exclaimed about Britain's adversaries, ``What kind of a people do they think we are?'' Well, Britain's adversaries found out what extraordinary people the British are. But all the democracies paid a terrible price for allowing the dictators to underestimate us. We dare not make that mistake again. So, let us ask ourselves, ``What kind of people do we think we are?'' And let us answer, ``Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well.''

Sir Winston led his people to great victory in war and then lost an election just as the fruits of victory were about to be enjoyed. But he left office honorably, and, as it turned out, temporarily, knowing that the liberty of his people was more important than the fate of any single leader. History recalls his greatness in ways no dictator will ever know. And he left us a message of hope for the future, as timely now as when he first uttered it, as opposition leader in the Commons nearly 27 years ago, when he said, ``When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed and at the mighty foes that we have laid low and all the dark and deadly designs that we have frustrated, why should we fear for our future? We have,'' he said, ``come safely through the worst.''

Well, the task I've set forth will long outlive our own generation. But together, we too have come through the worst. Let us now begin a major effort to secure the best -- a crusade for freedom that will engage the faith and fortitude of the next generation. For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.

Profiles in Courage

From the JFK Library:

For the first time ever, the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award will honor five individuals — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, U.S. Representative Liz Cheney, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Arizona Representative Russell “Rusty” Bowers, and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss — each for their courage to protect and defend democracy in the United States and abroad.

There is no issue today more important than the fight for democracy. These honorees have placed their careers and lives on the line to protect democratic principles and free and fair elections. They embody what President Kennedy admired most in others—political courage.

In February 2022, as Russia mounted a massive, unprovoked military assault on Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy marshaled the spirit, patriotism, and untiring sacrifice of the Ukrainian people in a life-or-death fight for their country - a struggle that endures to this day. From the first moment of the invasion, Zelenskyy and his family became targets for assassination by Russian forces. In the face of this constant danger, Zelenskyy has led a courageous defense of democratic ideals and political independence. With candor and clarity, he has focused the eyes of the world on the existential threat facing Ukraine, and on the need for robust, uncompromising international engagement and cooperation to safeguard all democratic societies. His principled leadership has strengthened the resolve of Ukrainians and people around the globe to protect and defend the fragile human right of self-determination.

Prior to the election in 2020, Representative Liz Cheney was elected by her colleagues to be chair of the House Republican Conference, making her the third-ranking Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the highest-ranking Republican woman in the history of the House. She has been one of the most conservative members within the Republican Conference. After the election, however, when President Trump falsely claimed that the election was stolen, she repeatedly called on the President to respect the rulings of the courts and his oath of office, and to publicly support the peaceful transfer of power. When the President instead rejected the lawful, certified outcome of the election, she broke with most in her party, urged fidelity to the Constitution, and stood her ground with honor and conviction. She stood against the lawlessness and violence of January 6th, and voted to impeach President Trump, concluding: "The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing.” Cheney received numerous death threats after casting her vote in favor of impeachment, and yet refused to take the politically expedient course that most of her party embraced. Because she would not remain silent or ignore the events of January 6th, Cheney's congressional colleagues stripped her of her leadership position in the GOP caucus. She now serves as the Vice Chair of the Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, and remains a consistent and courageous voice in defense of democracy.

In December 2020, shortly after the presidential election, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson was at home putting up Christmas decorations with her young son when armed protestors massed in front of her house demanding that Michigan's presidential election result be reversed. Protesters called Benson a "traitor” and a “criminal” for defending the certification of Michigan's accurate results, which favored Joe Biden. Benson, the state's chief elections officer, did not waver, and defended the will of Michigan voters and assured them that she would protect and defend the integrity of Michigan's vote in accordance with state law. Throughout the 2020 election cycle, Benson repeatedly refused to back down from fulfilling the duties of her office, even as threats and harassment from then-President Trump and his allies grew increasingly aggressive. Benson continues to speak out about the risks to free and fair elections in Michigan and nationwide, as Trump supporters continue to perpetuate false claims and work to seize control of state and local election processes from duly elected or appointed public servants.

Following the 2020 presidential election, Rusty Bowers, a pro-Trump Republican, resisted intense pressure from Trump and Rudy Giuliani and refused to go along with an illegal scheme to replace Arizona’s legal slate of electors with a false slate of electors who would elect Trump. “As a conservative Republican, I don’t like the results of the presidential election,” Bowers said. “I voted for President Trump and worked hard to reelect him. But I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election.” For his decision of conscience, Bowers endured persistent harassment and intimidation tactics from Trump supporters, and later survived an attempt to recall him from the legislature. In January 2022, Bowers again acted to protect the integrity of Arizona elections by stopping a Republican-sponsored bill that would have allowed the legislature to overturn the results of an election. He remains a target for pro-Trump partisans.

In December 2020, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a full-time employee in the Fulton County Department of Registration & Elections since 2017, became the target of a vicious smear campaign by then-President Trump and his allies who were seeking to overturn the 2020 election. As a registration officer, Moss mostly handles voter applications and absentee ballot requests. She also helps to process the vote count on Election Day, in addition to other duties. In the wake of a close vote that tipped the state of Georgia to Joe Biden, Trump and his supporters falsely accused Moss of processing fake ballots for Biden during the late-night hours of Election Day. After being identified and targeted by Trump and his followers, Moss received so many death threats and racist taunts that she was forced to change her appearance and go into hiding. She carried out her duties remotely as much as possible. Although state officials repeatedly debunked the Trump camp's lies about Moss, she continued to receive threats and harassing messages from Trump loyalists nearly a year after the election. Despite the onslaught of random, undeserved, and malicious attacks, Moss continues to serve in the Fulton County Department of Registration & Elections doing the hard and unseen work to run our democracy.