The history of ideas suggests that ideas with moral authority prevail in the long run over those that propagandize power and ruthlessness.
All men are created equal prevailed against ownership of men by men.
Democracy prevailed over fascism and communism. The ideal of democracy prevailed in ancient Athens over authoritarian Sparta.
The Roman republic prevailed over later authoritarianism until the Romans decided they wanted an empire.
The ideas and ideals of the founders of the American Republic prevailed, after great struggle, over the forces of concentrated wealth and power. And the ideal of “all men are created equal” prevailed after a bloody civil war.
The authoritarian model has re-emerged in unlikely form in twenty first century America. It will not prevail.
No greater statements of moral purpose and human idealism exist than those embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.
Sinister forces in America have emerged to overturn them both. Those forces proclaim the banner of white supremacy, privilege, and power. They are trying to convert the ideal of American democracy into an authoritarian supremacy.
Nothing in our Constitution permits them to do this.
We are engaged in a struggle for America’s soul.
To follow the path of authoritarianism, and its current structure of militias and mobs, is to abandon the ideas and ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.
The core of democracy is free and fair elections. Based solely on the Big Lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 national election, almost twenty States whose legislatures are in Republican Party control are eliminating the freedom and fairness of their elections, including national elections, increasing voter suppression, raising identity barriers, and reducing polling stations.
Those same States are restricting the authority of State and local election officials and empowering their own State legislatures to question and possibly supersede the popular vote outcomes.
Many if not most of these State actions are headed for the judicial system and possibly the Supreme Court. It should not surprise anyone that the decades-long effort to create a conservative court system, up to and including the Supreme Court, had anti-democratic, authoritarian purposes in mind for decades.
For ideas to have power, however, they must be understood, debated, and freely exchanged. Here is where the true treachery is hidden. Those plotting an authoritarian replacement of democracy do not accept the idea that all men are created equal. They do not recognize the moral principles underlying the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.
And they do not welcome free and open debate. That is at the core of authoritarianism throughout history.
American democracy is now being subverted by those who do not believe in the rule of law.
Those preparing to subvert the integrity of elections care only about consolidating their own power in the service of a white superior race, suppression of dissent, and an authoritarian power structure.
The test of our time, perhaps the ultimate test of a two hundred and forty year democracy, is whether there are enough Americans who understand our principles, who intuitively know that elections must be free and fair, and who instinctively turn their backs on demagogues.
“We the people” is not a casual phrase. It restates the founding principle of all republics since ancient Rome…popular sovereignty. The people are sovereign. Not covert ideological militias, plutocrats, and amateur insurrectionists. The people of America possess the sovereign power.
From the standpoint of the American Republic and the centrality of popular sovereignty to its identity, the struggle currently underway is much less liberalism versus conservatism or left versus right and much more about whether we the people will retain sovereignty over our Republic and its democracy or whether it will be taken over by authoritarian nationalists.
At stake is the survival of the American Republic and the democracy it practices.
If we who understand and accept the principles of democracy exert our sovereign power, our ideas and ideals will be restored and the American Republic will arise triumphant from this restoration.