Ending the far right agenda

"Tyranny of the Minority" is a blueprint for maintaining democracy

A requirement of democracy is the ability to lose. While never a desired outcome, losing forces you to make stronger arguments, dream up broader solutions, and think of policies that will appeal to a larger base. In a word, losing should make you better.

And when it comes to shoring up a coalition, that means better for a larger number of people. Winning and losing becomes a background proxy, almost invisible save for a few painful days following an election. The best losers return to the drawing board and immediately begin to expand their thinking. 

That’s not what the Republican party is doing.

Instead, write Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt in Tyranny of the Minority, the GOP is taking part in an “outsized fear of losing that turns parties against democracy.” 

The authors spend the first part of the book looking at democracies that have backslid, currently or previously, into authoritarianism: Hungary, Thailand, Germany, Spain. This leads up to the heart of the book, which is effectively a cautionary tale to America: it can happen here, too.

They warn about the dangers of semi-loyal democrats, those who espouse democratic support but work in self-interest. This passage is especially pertinent: 

When violent extremists enjoy the tacit support of a mainstream party, they are more likely to be shielded from legal prosecution or expulsion from public office.

An independent run might not be mainstream, but RFK Jr’s support isn’t nominal, and could impact the results of this election. Where does he fall on this topic?

Of course, Trump incited the rioters, a fact overlooked or ignored by the tens of millions of people who will vote for him in November. But many parties are complicit. Levitsky and Ziblatt note that the trend that follows a potential authoritarian after they’ve shown their true face:

• The media covers them as they would any other candidate

• Business leaders donate to their campaign

• Political consultants join their team

• Politicians and activists allow their private support to become public

There’s little chance that Trump will win the popular vote in 2024. He didn’t in 2016 or 2020. Yet, as the authors note, America’s fragile democracy is rife with allowances for minority rule. Sometimes it’s baked in; at other times, potential cracks are overlooked.

Many of our current laws around governance were drawn up when slavery was legal and women were unable to vote. Strong democracies amend their constitutions to change with the times: Norway’s constitution has been amended 316 times in two centuries. 

America is not nearly so open to change. Since our constitution was written, 11,848 amendments have been attempted. A whopping 27 have passed the government’s stringent rules.

.002 percent. 

Levitsky and Ziblatt then spend a solid portion of the book looking at the mechanisms by which minorities—in this context, radical right-wing groups that hold minority governance opinions—have exploited democratic processes in America. 

• America’s representative government, which was initially skewed toward smaller states with slaveholding populations, and which now favor rural areas

• The Electoral College, which was also designed to favor smaller, slaveholding states

• The veto, once a rarely used tool, and which is now used to block any legislation the minority party disagrees with

• Lifetime appointments of Supreme Court judges, which only averaged 8.3 years when first implemented (due to shorter life spans)

A few things have happened since these laws were implemented. America urbanized. The population exploded. People besides white male property owners gained rights.

And yet, at every step, minority privileges remain law. So while a majority of Americans favor stricter gun laws, reforms are impossible due to outsized representation of minority interests.

The twenty states with the highest rates of gun ownership contain barely a third as many people as the twenty states with the lowest rates of gun ownership. But these states are all equally represented in the Senate.

Likewise, there have been 700 attempts to abolish or reform the Electoral College even though a majority of Americans support doing away with this archaic system and letting the popular vote elect our president.

We’ve reached an inflection point, the authors note: “either America will be a multiracial democracy or it will not be a democracy at all.”