In Biden Won. But Has Trump Broken America (https://eand.co/biden-won-but-has-trump-broken-america-63f5e563fba7) Umair Hague, with supporting citations from some European scholars of democracy, makes a claim that America is broken. I counter that America has always been broken by their measures and was deliberately built that way.
There are a set of fundamental errors in your assumptions. Among these, in are:
· The United States is a Democracy
· The Trump Administration is engaged in a coup
· That the current body politic in the United State share common values or principles
· The Republican Party, or a large portion of it are ardent believers and supporters of violence
Is the United States a Democracy? No.
The United States of America was not constituted as a democracy, nor was it constituted as a federated republic of democratic states.
Its foundational principles were in fact structured to bind and limit direct or popular democracy. Its foundational principles are those of a Republic with some democratic principles applied at the central or Federal government level. A strict originalist read of the US Constitution with the exceptions of the extension of certain structural adjustments accomplished by the 13th, 14th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 24th and 26th does nothing to create, guarantee or extend a general democracy in the United States. Nor does the US Constitution mandate the type of government system any given state may adopt for itself. Granted state constitutions defined for themselves governing body’s organized along democratic principles the operative assumption under the US Constitution is that states are autonomous political units which banded together to provide for a common framework for Commerce, Common Defense, Common Foreign Affairs and for an appeal body to mediate between those autonomous political units when intrastate disagreement arose. Hence organs like the Electoral College designed to ensure that policies at the Federal level would be bound to state level interests and controls rather then to national popular opinion. The bicameral nature of the Federal legislator was also a binding factor on popular democracy; the Senate as originally construed as a house of state legislator appointed state representatives - expected to be a counter to the passions and impetuousness of the popularly elected House. Even after the 17th Amendment which democratized the appointment of Federal Senators, the expectations and historical behavior, until well after the 1970s, of the Federal Senators was as agents for each of the states individual interests, not as some trans-state deliberative body. The role of a US Senator was and still is to promote and protect the interests of the electorate of the individual state that elected him. If there is no concurrence of this as historical reality, then there is no need to read farther.
As to the 17th Amendment, there are many Conservative thinkers that believe the 17th has had more adverse unanticipated outcomes than positive effects on the Republic. As just one example it has amplified and reinforced the impact of campaign contributions on state Federal Senatorial campaigns with Federal Senators becoming more and more detached from the concern’s of their individual state’s electorates and more concerned with how they play to national audiences. All the 17th Amendment really managed to do was move the perceived buying and selling of Federal Senate seats from a state’s concern to a national concern while eliminating the historical problems around state legislative deadlocks to Senatorial appointment.
Of course the 13th 14th Amendments cure the defects of the US Constitution as put into effect on March 4th, 1789 and completes the work started with the Bill of Rights, extended by the abolitionist movement, and won by the blood and treasure of Unionist Americans in the US Civil War.
Finally, 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th completes the work of universal enfranchisement of all citizens not subject to disablements due to their status as convicted criminals. However universal enfranchisement in a republic does not in and of itself change a republic into a direct democracy. Again, to refer to the Electoral College, States appoint Electors based on the States constituency’s voting results, the bicameral nature of the Federal Legislature and until the 17th Amendment, appointment of Federal Senator by states’ legislatures.
Nor was the United State of America constituted as a federated republic of democratic states. It should be noted that any political subdivision on admission to the Union as a State; either US Territories or otherwise, are mandated by either the US Constitution or the Articles of Confederation to be direct democracies. Under the Land Ordinance of 1784 and the Northwest Ordinance (The Ordinance of 1787) they are mandated to have a “republican form of government” and to eliminate slavery and involuntary servitude by the end of 1800. There are in fact several ways to institute a republic without direct democracy.
In fact, the United States was constituted to restrain popular democracy and the excesses of the mob. We can look to France and see the immediate result of a government constituted without those restraints.
The assertion that the Trump administration is engaged in a coup is silly, hyperbolic and an attempt to poison the debate with hysteria.
A coup d’état is an illegal and overt attempt to unseat a sitting executive. The Trump Campaign is operating well within its legal rights in its challenges of process of vote counting. Was the contesting of the State of Florida’s vote counting results by the Gore Campaign a coup d’état, of course not. Gore was exercising his legal rights under Florida law, even though his intent was to unseat a sitting executive. In Trump’s case he in neither operating illegally nor is he attempting to unseat a sitting executive. A material portion of over 73 million American citizens are demanding true transparency in the vote counting processes prior to the individual State’s certifications of the election results. They are in fact entitled to transparency under the various states’ election law. The opinion of any private individual, media luminary or political representative, of the suitability of Trump personally or the correctness of the Administration’s policy is irrelevant to the legal rights of the Trump Campaign or the concerns of Trump supporters. Just as in the United States we do not try accused murders and rapist in the press or the public square, but rather in a duly constituted courtroom, so the Trump Campaign’s trail must be conducted in a duly constituted court. It is worth noting that no rational member of either the Trump Campaign or the community of Trump supporters is calling for violence. They are only calling for their day in court.
The body politic in the United States does not now, nor has it ever shared majority of their values or foundational principles.
From our founding, as evidence with the debate over slavery, there have been material divergence over our foundational principles. I will not address the arguments over the evils of slavery. Our Civil War, the blood and treasure expended by the Union and the 13th and 14th Amendments have resolved that debate. However there remain significant disagreements among us. The fundamental mistake made by most modern liberal scholars and observers of the American condition is the foundational position the concept of the individual and its relationship to the collective plays in American political thought. For most of those who identify with the “Right” or conservative movement in the United States is an abiding belief that all things devolve into a question of individual rights. Our current debate over appropriate response to Corona 19 is this disagreement writ large. This concept is so fundamental to the conservative movement it is like water to a fish, many on the right do not even think about it. This underlying concept, that the rights of the individual are sacrosanct is the explanation for what many modern liberals see as voters voting against their own self-interest. It is not greed or economic unsophistication or racism that leads American voters to vote in a large minority against public healthcare initiatives. These voters hold the freedom to choose their own healthcare as dearer to them than protections against illness caused bankruptcy or even quality of care. Similarly, in matters economic, individual property rights and individual determination of economics is more dear to them than a check from the government regardless of the personal risk. For many of us the concept of the collective does not exist, just a heap of pennies is subordinate and dependent on the individual penny and does not exist but for the existence of the individual penny, so the collective is subordinate and dependent on the individual and the individuals rights are what matters. Just because the Iowa farmer may not have the technical philosophical training to explain it this way, does not mean that the Iowa farmer does not intuitively behave this way. I suggest that modern liberals should adopt a method from Six Sigma and ask why more often rather than immediately jump to either “they’re stupid” or “they’re racist” to explain the underlying differences in approaches to policy in the United States.
The Republican Party or a significant portion of it believes in violence. Yes and no.
First, we need to dispense with the concept of the Republican Party as the unit of measure, for this as well as in general. I would rather consider the conservative movement in the American experience. From our founding a large proportion of the American body politic, if not the majority has seen violence as a legitimate tool to protect individual rights and force change. Our truly defining moments in our political history were violent acts: The American Revolution, the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement in the 1970s. From our founding, in our theory of government, in our State constitutions, in our Federal Constitution, in our court cases, violence has been reserved as the province of the individual. Central to the political and legal tradition of the United States is the universal enfranchisement in both the polling place and the gun. We, by our constitution and our history, are a violent and as defined by the salons of Europe, only partially civilized nation. It is well remembered that we were in fact founded by a repudiation of what was many of the defining characteristics of European civilization and for a large portion of the electorate a continuing distrust and repudiation of European opinions. However, that same tradition of reserving violence to the individual, has a tradition of righteously demanding justification for act of violence. While states may vary on justification, for example, in the State of West Virginia lethal force can be used to prevent felony property crimes (see West Virginia Code Chapter 55. Actions, Suits and Arbitration; Judicial Sale § 55–7–22. Civil relief for persons resisting certain criminal activities), even in WV and other states like Texas and Montana, it requires significant demonstration of justification. Nonetheless, violence is a right resolved to the individual for purposes of defense of body, defense of property and defense of individual liberty. In the American conservative tradition, the relationship of violence to individual rights and standing has more in common with Rome and Athens than is does to Bonn or Paris.
The “Left” in American also sees violence as an appropriate response to certain provocations as well. Just look to our recent Antifa and BLM protests where the Left has been apologist to those “Peaceful Protests”. The difference is that the conservatives see violence as an individually justified response and the Left sees it as a collectivist justified response. The conservatives talk of violence in terms of individual body, individual property, individual rights, the Left talks of vacuous notions like the collective.
Here is another foundational difference that makes common values nigh impossible in the American political tradition. The Left believes in collective rights and collective guilt. Conservative thought in American only recognizes individual rights and individual guilt. It is this distinction, that makes conservatives in America foundationally antithetical to the concept of Structural or Institutional racism. If rights and guilt are entirely personal concerns, then damages and remediation of those damages can only be accomplished by the individual. The moral concept here is so simple a 1st grader can understand the model of fairness used. How is it fair to punish the entire class for the misbehavior of a minority of the students even if the behaving students somehow unknowing benefited by that misbehavior? How is it fair to punish an employee of a firm that does not engage in discriminatory behaviors, even if he benefits unknowingly by the discriminatory behavior of his hiring managers. To further crystalize this an argument could be made that my father benefited in 1969 from the redlining practices in the Pittsburgh, PA mortgage market when he purchased his farm in South Bend, PA based on a tenuous claim that the redlining in Pittsburgh somehow made money cheaper in South Bend (remember that mortgage markets in 1969 where not regional/national as today), however my father was unknowing of this theoretical advantage and thus not morally culpable of it.
The United States is not a democracy, it is a republic and this matters.
The Trump Campaign is not engaged in a coup, but pursuing its rights under US law and this matters.
Yes, buy European measures, the US democracy is broken, but it was designed to be a broken democracy and this matters.
Yes, the United States is fundamentally violent: conservatives reserve the right to violence to the individual, and the Left manifests a collective right to violence and this matters.
Yes, the United States is a semi-civilized nation and many of us both the Left and the conservatives like it this way and want to keep it this way. Any examination of the history of civilized Europe from 1900 to 2020 provides amble evidence for an argument against adopting European standards of civilization.
And finally, regardless of the impact on the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election any fraud and all irregularities must be investigated. Men died to establish and preserve the right to vote; Men that abuse that right should be held accountable.
