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A SOCIAL MOVEMENT FOR DEMOCRACY IS BADLY NEEDED IN AMERICA

By Luis Fleischman

The role of social movements becomes crucial in advancing a constitutional democracy, particularly when that democracy becomes eroded.  The army of judges, lawyers, and jurists that abound in the United States, and that we normally rely on, is not always sufficient to guarantee in such circumstances the claim of justice that social movements are in a unique position to advance. 

Since the U.S has a Constitution, it was believed that such a legal text could serve as a utopian document that would guide us towards maximization of liberties as society increasingly demands expansion of those liberties. When the Constitution was written, there was still slavery and legal inequality (which lasted long after slavery was abolished).  However, as social movements and advocacy groups, such as the women’s movement, labor unions, the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, and others, demanded a universalizing of rights, those rights were extended. By the same token, Americans trusted the judicial system regardless of the personal view of the individuals who occupied the judiciary as protectors of these basic liberties. That said, rights expansion is problematic. Let us take the state of Florida (where I live) as an example. A court blocked Florida from enforcing a law that would have prevented cruise lines from requiring their passengers to provide COVID-19 vaccine records. Constitutionally thinking, a private company should have every right to establish any rules it sees fit to keep their passengers safe and healthy.  

On the other hand, also in Florida, a court of appeals reversed the decision of a lower court that paused the state’s ability to enforce a ban on strict mask mandates in schools. As a result of the court of appeals decision, the state will be able to punish school districts that enforce mandates. This decision enables the government to abuse autonomous agencies such as school districts when they establish policies to protect the students and school staff. The state does so under the guise of a perverse definition of freedom. 

What does this mean? It means that courts are unpredictable, even in cases whose constitutionality seems clear and obvious. 

Therefore, the defense of democracy should not be left to the legal system alone. The defense will have to become a social movement or an advocacy enterprise, as has been the fight for LGBT rights, climate change and the environment, or other social issues. Democracy can no longer be assumed to be guaranteed by the country’s legal structure.

Likewise, states seem to be portraying themselves as the ultimate bearer of rights. Some of the new electoral laws could strip members of their electoral college rights, and ultimately the rights of the voters that put them there, of the power to elect the President. The journalist Barton Gellman has warned that given Article II of the Constitution, state legislators could override state electors because electors depend on states. Barton claims that several Supreme Court justices hold these views.  

 In other words, the states of the union seem to stand above local election bodies. This is contrary to what fascinated Tocqueville about American democracy. He saw America as a place where the power of civil society moved from the bottom up. The tighter the connect of the body politic to the citizen, the more it accords with the interests and needs of the citizen. For officials like Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, the farthest democracy can travel is to the Statehouse. 

This leaves a potential local population disenfranchised and unable to speak.  By convincing them that the institutions and the elites betrayed the people and that Trump and DeSantis are going to restore their power once again, they are now ready to allow the reversal of the spread of liberty to those beyond their membership. Too many tend to be more emotional than thoughtful.  This is the assumption of these populist leaders who claim to love the people. Those leaders, acting as demagogues, work to convince the people to be injudicious. 

Unfortunately, they have a reason to believe so. The media predict that Republicans will win the 2022 mid-term and that Trump could ultimately win the 2024 election.  Polls that show the decline of President Joe Biden’s popularity seem to confirm this.  Furthermore, moderate Republicans in Congress critical of Trump are abandoning ship by not running for re-election. Those like Adam Kinzinger and Anthony Gonzales seem to think the Trump avalanche is unstoppable. The same applies to Senators Pat Toomey, Bob Portman and to those who first reached that conclusion, including Bob Corker and Jeff Flake. That is encouraging for Trump and his allies. 

Further, Trump’s impressive expansion of the Republican base began by closing the possibility that Trump be challenged in primaries. Two weak Republican candidates attempted to challenge Trump in the primaries only to ultimately give up without a fight.  Several states decided to cancel the primaries and the Republican National Committee voted to provide unanimous support to Trump. Trump’s populism colonized the Republican Party while the Party offered no resistance. Nobody wanted to be on the wrong side of Donald Trump. Of course, this has to do with the phenomenon of party primacy, which I have discussed elsewhere. The primacy of the party has created in both parties the dynamics that, whoever occupies the leadership of the party, particularly a President, exercises undue influence on its members who tend to fear expressions of dissent. (We have clearly seen this in Obama’s era, less so under Biden). 

It was sadly predictable that those Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment or to certify the 2020 election would be censured by their local Republican parties. Opportunism added to this nefarious formula. Well-educated lawyers knowledgeable of the U.S Constitutional principles, including Ivy League graduates, enlisted to corrode democratic principles. What is curious is that they didn’t have to do so. Nothing compelled them to do so. If such lack of principles and presence of opportunism is seen in democracy, what could happen in a dictatorship is unimaginable.

What are the politicians afraid of? Being insulted? Being ostracized? Not being re-elected?   What about the need to remain in office to carry out these policies and projects necessary to improve our country and the world?  

Considering these events, and Americans passivity in the face of these events, it becomes easier to understand how the German lawyers, doctors and the German middle class generally collapsed in the face of the overwhelming Nazi totalitarian machine. 

Between the Trumpists, the fearful and the fatalists, a democratic America is no longer to be taken for-granted. President Biden believes that by speaking about unity, talking about bread-and-butter issues, and ignoring the assault on democracy, things will work out. They will not. Half of American civil society seems to have transferred their rights and their fate to a higher power, not God, but their leader and his captive party. Likewise, our judges and lawyers are no longer capable of guaranteeing a Constitutional order. The friend-enemy concept of politics, put forward by Carl Schmitt, seems to have prevailed over the more civilized ally-adversary relation expected in a democracy.

As institutional democracy is being blocked, Americans must resort to non-violent mass demonstrations, to organizing, in order to achieve that democracy. A social movement for democracy could unite conservatives and liberals; Democrats and Republicans; gay and straight; black, brown and white; pro-life and pro-choice supporters; industrialists and environmentalists; religious and secular people, etc.  It can rally under the banner that individual rights begin with a robust democracy.

In the absence of bi-partisan consensus about democracy, civil society should take upon itself the task of demanding the implementation of a constitutional liberal democracy. This social movement ought not be about the fight against climate change, the fight for racial or gender equality, for or against abortion. Rather, it should bring all these otherwise friend-enemy relations into a common fight against illiberal democracy and should call for the return of classical liberalism, what John Rawls calls “reasonableness” in politics.

 Schmitt thought classical liberalism to be “apolitical” because it encourages political actors to be timid and unwilling to fight for what they really care or for an identity. (Rejections of vaccines or mask wearing have become symbols of identity politics) It is true that democracy reflects a pluralism of ideas that sometimes are irreconcilable. However, Schmitt suggests that the concept of the political as a friend-enemy relations can only lead to dictatorship (an outcome Schmitt supported), to civil war or to a highly divided society eventually incapable of dealing with external challenges and external enemies.  Is this what the American people want? I doubt it. 

Therefore, democracy must be able to shield itself from self-destruction.  There must be room to allow for Immanuel Kant’s position that we need to treat the supposed “enemy” with respect and dignity. This idea demands that we remain open to negotiation and compromise. 

What are America’s populists so passionately fighting for? Their ideas are hardly clear. Instead, they prioritize power and difference over content and ideas, and allow resentment and anger to predominate. This is precisely the friend-enemy concept of politics. 

  A new social movement must send a clear message to all Americans and particularly the political class, that the pernicious political culture born in 2016 must be reversed.

About Luis Fleischman

Luis Fleischman is a professor of Sociology at Palm Beach State College, the co-founder of the think-tank the Palm Beach Center for Democracy and Policy Research. He is also the author of “Latin America in the Post-Chavez Era: The Threat to U.S. Security,” and the author of a forthcoming book, “The Middle East Riddle: The Arab-Israeli Conflict in Light of Political and Social Transformations in the Arab World,” to be published by New Academia.”