Trump’s authoritarian impulses threaten liberty
While Americans were celebrating Veterans Day last weekend, President Trump was in Manila praising Rodrigo Duterte, the Filipino strongman known for ordering his police to kill, without trial, thousands of suspected drug users and dealers. Trump, in his embrace of Duterte, is repudiating the very values that American veterans fought for in World War II.
The war changed America’s role. For the first time, we led an alliance of liberal democracies against Fascism, and we won. We came to stand for and protect (albeit imperfectly) the values of liberal democracy: free and fair elections, free speech, a free press, freedom of religion and of association, and respect for the rule of law.
Trump’s actions undermine these core commitments. Internationally, he distances himself from democratic allies such as Germany and other NATO nations while embracing authoritarian leaders like the Philippines’ Duterte, Poland’s Kaczynski who has undermined his nation’s nascent democracy, and Russia’s Putin who invaded Ukraine and whose critics in the Russian press seem to end up dead.
Domestically, Trump bashes the free press as “fake news” and re-posts videos that appear to show him body-slamming and punching a reporter. Echoing Stalin, he calls the press the “enemy of the people.” The president delegitimizes the judiciary when he derides the “so-called judge” who declared his Muslim travel ban unconstitutional. He flouts basic rule-of-law principles when he demands that the Justice Department investigate his political enemies, fires the FBI director for investigating him, and calls, before trial, for an army deserter to be executed by firing squad.
These actions do not fall neatly along the left/right divide that has structured American politics in recent decades. To understand Trump and what he stands for, we have to go back to when we entered, and won, World War II. That was when America stepped forward as the leading example and protector of liberal democracy. It is that commitment that Trump continually questions and weakens.
Trump himself tipped us off to this when he adopted the “America First” mantra. Originally, this was the slogan of those, including Nazi sympathizers, who opposed America’s entry into the Second World War. It is an apt slogan for a President who keeps backing away from the role that America assumed after it won that war.
This is a bad time for the U.S. to have such a president. A recent article in the Journal of Democracy explains that the number of democratic nations, which has surged since World War II and, especially, since the 1970s, stopped growing in 2006 and began to decline. Another reports that while 72 percent of those born before World War II say that it is “essential” to live in a democracy, only 30 percent of millennials do.
At such a moment, the world needs an American leader who will articulate a compelling vision of liberal democracy and lead by example. Instead, we have a president who embraces authoritarian leaders, questions our commitment to NATO and our democratic allies, and attacks the freedom of the press, independent judiciary and the rule of law.
I had the opportunity to visit Omaha Beach in Normandy this past summer. I saw the proud line of flags of those democratic nations that had, together, taken that beach. Like so many others, I stood there and wondered: what did these brave men fight and die for? Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower said it well in his pre-D-Day message to the troops: “The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you... you will bring about... the elimination of Nazi tyranny... and security for ourselves in a free world.”
When President Donald Trump praises tyrants and undermines the core values of liberal democracy, he disparages that which our soldiers fought for in World War II. He should not have embraced the strongman Duterte, least of all on Veterans Day weekend.