Democratic Norms vs. Authoritarianism

It seems as if our nation is being torn apart. We are more divided than we have been for generations. We’ve always had disagreements about policy and that’s fine — reasonable people can disagree on policy. I believe the bigger issue recently relates to upholding democratic norms vs. the possible move towards authoritarianism.

Here’s a sample of liberal vs. conservative views of various policy issues:

In a democratic society, each of the above issues (and many others) are perfectly reasonable ones over which to have differing points of view and vigorous debate. For generations, liberals and conservatives have been arguing and debating these and other similar issues. Healthy differences in our points of view on policy issues are key to our democracy.

Unfortunately, there appears to be another area of difference which has arisen in our political environment which has Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and Libertarians concerned: the erosion of democratic norms.

My eldest daughter, Claire, recently attended a presentation at her university by political science professor Brian Frederking who laid out the traditional democratic norms vs. norms from authoritarian regimes:

Lately, we have been moving from the left column to the right column. I think all Americans believe in the democratic norms in the left column, but that these issues can be overlooked/confused when combined with some of the policy issues listed in the first chart above. For instance, for a conservative, if the President is making big strides on the policy issues they agree with, but is also moving away from democratic norms, it may be hard to separate the two. By the way, the left also has issues with a move from democratic norms — notably finding offense and suppressing speech they don’t agree with (Exhibit A is the issue at Middlebury College last year). In reality, viewing issues as left vs. right or liberal vs. conservative doesn’t capture the issues well. Instead, a better way to look at the current situation is like this:

Issues of democracy are not conservative vs. liberal issues. We are all Americans. When Obama was arguably overstepping his bounds in terms of executive orders it was incumbent on the Congress and Judiciary to pull him back in line. But, notably, almost all the disagreements between liberals and conservatives surrounding Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, etc. had to do with where each President’s policies were on the liberal vs. conservative policy spectrum. There was little or no erosion of democratic norms.

My point in this post is not left vs. right or Democrat vs. Republican. Rather, I urge all Americans to stand up for, and back, democratic norms. Do not confuse disagreements over policy with chipping away at our democratic beliefs and institutions.