‘Democracy isn’t the objective’
Having grown up Black in Alabama, I’ve known for most of my life that many of the conservatives who speak passionately about patriotism and the flag and loyalty to country don’t believe in democracy. They and their forebears made that clear by resisting every effort to extend democratic rights to Black Americans. Nor is that ancient history. Conservatives are still moved to fits of rage over athletes who kneel during the national anthem, peaceful protesters who decry police violence and Muslim immigrants who are elected to political office. Never mind that the flag they so ardently defend represents the right to do all those things.
Usually, the members of this peculiar antidemocratic movement manage to conceal their disdain for genuine democracy under a barrage of bromides about "law and order" and "respect for tradition." But Sen. Mike Lee, R-utah, in a fit of candor, could not be bothered with any such rhetorical feints. "We’re not a democracy," he tweeted earlier this week for all to see.
Rather than restrain himself with the realization that he had revealed an unacceptable truth about his values, he continued: "Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity (sic) are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that."
Lee will demur that he meant "outright" when he planted "rank" in his tweet. But for him and his ilk, the system of government that we celebrate with our pledges and speeches and songs of freedom is "rank" when it allows for the election of a Black man as president. It becomes "rank" when it allows a woman of Black and South Asian heritage to share the debate stage with a white man as a vice-presidential candidate. It becomes "rank" when it threatens to wrest control of the U.S. Senate away from Republicans. Lee and his fellow travelers hold such a system in contempt.
Lee’s defenders leapt to articulate an argument that I have been hearing for decades now: The United States is not a democracy, they say. It’s a democratic republic. Ultra-conservatives have been reciting that at least since the days of the John Birch Society, when they realized allowing Black Americans broad access to the ballot would surely change a country in which a white Christian culture had always held hegemony. And what, exactly, is a democratic
republic? It’s a system in which citizens (all of them) elect representatives to their government. As John Adams wrote at the dawn of the republic: "No determinations are carried, it is true, in a simple representative democracy, but by consent of the majority or their representatives."
As the majority becomes browner, though, Lee and the cult of white privilege become more agitated. When Lee speaks of "liberty" and "prosperity," he is not espousing those virtues for me and mine. His version of "liberty" envisions a system in which the powerful face few constraints, the wealthy pay little in taxes, and dominance by a white, male, heterosexual establishment is unfettered.
Still, Lee hardly revealed any secrets. The conservative movement’s turn toward authoritarianism has been obvious since the election of President Donald J. Trump, who admires dictators, tramples constitutional principles and has been unwilling to pledge fealty to a foundational feature of this democracy: the peaceful transfer of power if he loses. The morning after the debate between Vice President Mike Pence and his Democratic rival, Sen. Kamala Harris, D -Calif., Trump tore into his consigliere, Attorney General William Barr, for failing to imprison Trump’s political enemies, including Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. That’s straight from the playbook of banana republics such as Venezuela. ( Vladimir Putin wouldn’t waste time imprisoning his political rivals; he would poison them.)
Trump is hardly an aberration. He represents the nadir — the natural devolution — of a political party that has spent decades pandering to reactionaries, blocking the ballot and stalling progress toward full equality for all. The president’s unhinged lies about voter fraud are less coherent than many other conservative arguments, but they sprout from the same antidemocratic principles.
At least Lee was honest. If democracy grants equal rights to Americans such as Kamala Harris and the little brown girls watching her on that debate stage, he wants it destroyed.