Opinion There Is a Way to Make America Safe for Democracy Midterm Elections - Us Politics HEAD TOPICS

Opinion There Is a Way to Make America Safe for Democracy

10/21/2022 2:45:00 PM

What if we let majoritarian democracy actually take root

Midterm Elections Us Politics

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New York Times Opinion

“If majoritarian democracy, even at its most shackled, is a better safeguard against tyranny and abuse than our minoritarian institutions, then imagine how we might fare if we let majoritarian democracy actually take root in this country,” jbouie writes. What if we let majoritarian democracy actually take root to secure the lives of Black Americans, free and freed, from discrimination, violence and exploitation.If allowed to stand in full, the Civil Rights Act of 1875 — passed by only the third U.S. Congress to have Black members, who were elected in some of the first truly free elections in the South — would have outlawed discrimination in public accommodations like railroads, steamboats, hotels and theaters and prohibited jury exclusion on the basis of race. But the court, in an 1883 opinion, decided that neither the 13th nor the 14th Amendment gave Congress the power to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals.The advent of Jim Crow, similarly, had less to do in the beginning with a nefarious majority of voters rushing to the polls to subjugate their Black neighbors than with a long campaign of violence meant to neutralize Black voters and intimidate their white allies. The men who pioneered Jim Crow in Mississippi, for example, were by no means a majority, nor did they represent one in a state where a large part of the public was Black. As the historian C. Vann Woodward summarized it in “ Read more:
New York Times Opinion » Opinion How to Strangle Democracy While Pretending to Engage in It Opinion Democracy Is Defenseless and the Midterms Can Kill It A fight for abortion rights is a fight for democracy Opinion Opinion Will Gas Prices Doom Democracy?

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Shares plummeted 25% in premarket trading after Snapchat’s parent company said it was operating on an assumption there would be no revenue growth in the current quarter. Read more >> jbouie No thanks, we already know mob rule is not good! Opinion How to Strangle Democracy While Pretending to Engage in ItWhen those on the left see their opponents becoming incoherent and dangerous, what prevents them from developing the self-enclosed self-assurance that their way is the only way? asks CarlosNYT. CarlosNYT Pretty sure hirschmann specifically warns against the false equivalences that pervade this whole op-ed. CarlosNYT CarlosNYT In a multicultural society, democracy becomes a racial headcount. Opinion Democracy Is Defenseless and the Midterms Can Kill It'A derelict Republican Party must be defeated on November 8 if our democracy is to survive.' Endless wars must be defeated... 😜🤣😃THE USA REPUBLIC WAS TAKEN OVER 100 YEARS AGO BY 🖕PRIVATE CORPORATE POWER🖕🏼🖕🏾🖕1886 the railroads bought the supreme court and made 🖕🏼'CORPORATIONS PEOPLE'🖕100% AGAINST THE USA CONSTITUTIONI would say Wilson was the start of the real takeover Sen Chris Murphy of Conn D said if you don't want to fund the ukraine war vote Republican😃so I voted Republican 1st time 😃but then in Corporate owned Calif the elections are a farce😝 A fight for abortion rights is a fight for democracy OpinionWhat does freedom truly mean if we do not have ownership over our bodies? No…it’s a fight to kill unborn babies. lol. Same people force you and your child to get a wuhan shot that does not even stop the spread of wuhan virus Opinion Will Gas Prices Doom Democracy?“It’s hard to think of a worse metric for judging a president and his party than” gas prices, paulkrugman writes, “a price determined mainly by events abroad and technical production issues here at home.” paulkrugman 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄 paulkrugman 'technical production issues'. Does that refer to a President that has vowed to shut down the oil industry? The one that has made is incredibly difficult, and expensive, to drill for oil in the US? The one that took over an oil industry that was exporting oil and gas? paulkrugman Then why do presidents take credit for low gas prices? And, since prices are determined largely by things out of government's control, why do we ask the government to 'fix' the economy? Smokey Robinson and Motown Records mastermind Berry Gordy named Grammy Awards MusiCares Persons of the YearSmokey Robinson and Motown Records mastermind Berry Gordy made history together in the 1960s, when they were instrumental in creating what Motown billed as: 'The sound of Young America.' and the laws written to secure the lives of Black Americans, free and freed, from discrimination, violence and exploitation.dismissed as “shortcuts to the understanding of multifarious reality.Richard W.Updated: Oct. If allowed to stand in full, the Civil Rights Act of 1875 — passed by only the third U.S. And particularly valuable for a time, like today, when polarization and demagoguery are overtaking American politics, Hirschman bequeathed us a slim and vital book identifying the slippery arguments that pretend to engage in democratic deliberation, even as they strangle it. Congress to have Black members, who were elected in some of the first truly free elections in the South — would have outlawed discrimination in public accommodations like railroads, steamboats, hotels and theaters and prohibited jury exclusion on the basis of race. If we fail to renounce the Republican Party's claim and reject their candidates in the pending midterms, we will face some measure of fascism here. But the court, in an 1883 opinion , decided that neither the 13th nor the 14th Amendment gave Congress the power to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals. (A Times reviewer called it a “handbook for bemused liberals. The advent of Jim Crow, similarly, had less to do in the beginning with a nefarious majority of voters rushing to the polls to subjugate their Black neighbors than with a long campaign of violence meant to neutralize Black voters and intimidate their white allies.m. The men who pioneered Jim Crow in Mississippi, for example, were by no means a majority, nor did they represent one in a state where a large part of the public was Black.S. Far from establishing democracy in our fundamental law, the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution deliberately and ingeniously to render it impossible. As the historian C. Vann Woodward summarized it in “ The Strange Career of Jim Crow ,” “In spite of the ultimate success of disfranchisement, the movement met with stout resistance and succeeded in some states by narrow margins or the use of fraud. Long before America was cleaved into red versus blue, deplorable versus woke, or MAGA versus everybody else, Hirschman argued that political factions were cementing into extreme, unyielding stances and that their arguments, with a nod toward Clausewitz, had become little more than “the continuation of civil war with other means.” There was, however, a majority vote to protect the rights of voters in the South.   We have to say now the Founders were mistaken. But that vote — the vote to pass the 1890 Federal Elections Bill , which would have empowered the national government to supervise elections in the former Confederate states — failed to overcome a Senate filibuster. When conservatives decry calls for progressive reform, he wrote, they often deploy one of three theses: perversity, futility and jeopardy. We cannot know how American history would have unfolded in the absence of our counter-majoritarian institutions. But the example of Reconstruction and its aftermath suggests that if majorities had been able to act, unimpeded, to protect the rights of Black Americans, it might have been a little less tragic than what we experienced instead. The second is even more pessimistic: Your policy proposal cannot make a dent in the status quo, and your repeated, futile efforts only make me question your motives. It will survive only if we defend it, and today this vulnerable democracy faces its greatest threat ever: the Republican Party claims it doesn't work, insisting our last national exercise of democracy in the 2020 Presidential election was fraudulent. It is an insight we can apply to the present. It’s not the national majority that threatens the right to vote or the right to bodily autonomy or that wants to strip transgender Americans of their right to exist in civil society (on that last point, 64 percent of Americans, according to the Pew Research Center , support laws or policies that would “protect transgender people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces”). Once you have Hirschman’s categories in mind, they appear everywhere. If it were up to majorities of Americans — and if, more important, the American political system more easily allowed majorities to express their will — then Congress would have already strengthened the Voting Rights Act, codified abortion rights into law and protected the civil rights of L.  The Republican Party leadership quickly joined the charade, continuing a long history of growing dereliction. G. (Hirschman recalled Milton Friedman’s assertion that “minimum wage laws are about as clear a case as one can find of a measure the effects of which are precisely the opposite of those intended.B.T. That the three theses can be deployed in illogical combinations — your anti-poverty program won’t reach those most in need, and it will also destroy their incentive to work! — does little to lessen their appeal. If we fail to renounce the Republican Party's claim and reject their candidates in the pending midterms, we will face some measure of fascism here.Q. Americans. With such an enemy, any mix of arguments will do. Even the legislative victories most Americans rightfully admire — like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — were only possible with a supermajority of lawmakers assembled in the wake of a presidential assassination.  But universal suffrage has a very brief history. If it were up to the national majority, American democracy would most likely be in a stronger place, not the least because Donald Trump might not have become president.S. Our folk beliefs about American government notwithstanding, the much-vaunted guardrails and endlessly invoked norms of our political system have not secured our democracy as much as they’ve facilitated the efforts of those who would degrade and undermine it. Majority rule is not perfect but rule by a narrow, reactionary minority — what we face in the absence of serious political reform — is far worse. The left displays its own unity of certitude, he suggested in the penultimate chapter of “The Rhetoric of Reaction,” and its habit of rationalization is “richer in maneuvers, largely of exaggeration and obfuscation, than it is ordinarily given credit for.S. And much of our fear of majorities, the legacy of a founding generation that sought to restrain the power of ordinary people, is unfounded. It is not just that rule of the majority is, as Abraham Lincoln said, “the only true sovereign of a free people,” it is also the only sovereign that has reliably worked to protect those people from the deprivations of hierarchy and exploitation. The first progressive argument Hirschman pinpoints is the “mutual support” thesis — rather than coming into conflict, new and old progressive reforms will produce a “happy, positive interaction. If majoritarian democracy, even at its most shackled, is a better safeguard against tyranny and abuse than our minoritarian institutions, then imagine how we might fare if we let majoritarian democracy actually take root in this country. These fortunate people comprised an American crypto-nobility, matching its English counterpart in status: they were white, male, free, over 21 years of age, and owners of property. The liberty of would-be masters might suffer. Next is the “imminent danger” thesis, contending that a particular policy is urgently needed to fend off a looming disaster, whether real or just really scary. The liberty of ordinary people, on the other hand, might flourish. The Times is committed to publishing . “People enjoy and feel empowered by the confidence, however vague, that they ‘have history on their side,’” Hirschman wrote. They were men of intelligence and good will, well educated, and committed to assuring life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for citizens of the new nation.