A Road Map To The Dissolution of a Democratic Republic: Lessons From Ancient & Recent History
February 2020
“The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence”
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
For the past few weeks, we have all heard numerous Senators, political commentators and pundits repeat the now famous comment that Benjamin Franklin offered to Dr. James McHenry who was Maryland’s delegate to the constitutional convention. Franklin’s remark, offered as he departed Independence Hall on the final day of creating our Constitution was offered as a rhetorical question and it’s answer. Franklin quipped “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?” “A Republic, if you can keep it.” These words prophetically offered to the doctor in 1787 and now to all of us in 2020, an explicit warning about the fragility of our democracy and the delicacy of those underlying enlightenment principles that serve as the foundation of our democratic republic. By implication his message also contained and still contains an ominous warning regarding the countervailing and potentially craven impulses of those in power to hold onto and to expand their power at the expense of the nation. Franklin prophetically recognized that the collective ideals, values and principles of our nation would eventually be challenged at some point by the Machiavellian aspiration to amass power by a few already in power. That time is surely now.
While Franklin’s rhetorical warning may at this point in our nation’s history be deemed by some as guardedly optimistic and others (who are perhaps more pessimistic) as alarmist. Today, we as a nation seem to share none of Franklin’s concern for the continuity of our republic. In short, we seem to collectively exhibit total confidence that nothing could ever shake our nation’s current or future ability to maintain our democracy, or as Franklin said “to keep it”. Why at this moment might Franklin’s warning be so important? and why do I question my fellow citizens’ faith that our nation’s ideals are so strong and so deep that no event, no political movement nor any person or persons could ever devolve our democracy into an autocracy or dictatorship? Why do we today – unlike Franklin then – blindly believe that our ideals, our electoral practices, and our checks and balances will remain operative and strong in perpetuity? It seems naïve at best and negligent at worst to not at least recognize if not fear that forces (some internal and some external) are always at work on our political system and that the intent of some of those forces are not in our best interest and seek to erode our democracy. In spite of the false confidence and naïve optimism that has become part of the DNA of our national ethos, the history of democracy (both ancient and recent) tells us that we should take seriously Franklin’s caution to be attentive to our existential status. We might also want to remember another famous caution offered by philosopher George Santayana who cautioned that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.". Perhaps’ Santayana’s warning is even more prescient for our democracy at this moment than Franklin’s. I suggest this because I believe that today most Americans rely upon two historically indefensible presumptions when thinking about the existential condition of our nation. The first being that “it could never happen here” with the “it” being the devolution of our democratic governance into a form of despotism, autocracy or dictatorship. The second indefensible presumption is that a transition from democratic governance to despotism, autocracy or dictatorship happens suddenly (typically through a coup d’etat) and that our nation (more than others) has institutionalized checks, balances and guardrails in place to protect us from an overtly un-democratic power grab by an elected leader who may have despotic tendencies.
However, an unpacking of how other democratic republics devolved into autocratic dictatorships may be of some value as we consider our own nation’s trajectory through the perilous waters that I believe we now find ourselves in.
History (both recent and ancient) shows us that more often than not, the devolution from democracy to autocracy, despotism or dictatorship happened gradually through a sequence of un-dramatic political acts and often involved a democratically elected party, group of leaders or single figure who deliberately but incrementally shifted shared political power and authority away from others and accrued it over time without much resistance by those from whom it was taken. In short, history tells us that democracies often devolve into dictatorships through “evolutionary” processes and through quiet and soft re-alignments of power and authority. The devolution does not always happen –as we incorrectly assume - through “revolution”. There can be no doubt that we are currently witnessing such a soft evolutionary re-distribution of power. We have seen a significant and general weakening of our legislative branch, a change in who and how decisions to prosecute war are made, a near total loss of legislative oversight over the executive branch, the removal of the impeachment process as a remedial act to correct injurious behavior, and finally the failure of our judicial branch to correct the shift of power and authority.
To return to Santayana’s warning that to avoid repeating mistakes of the past one must know the past, a precedental analysis of how other democratic republics devolved to authoritarian forms of governance may help us understand if we are witnessing similar events and if we should be less confident in our belief that “it could never happen here”. Likewise, such an analysis may serve as a self-check to help us better comprehend if we are diligently maintaining the well-being our democratic institutions or if we are witnessing the shifting of power and authority in full view of us all and without resistance. In short, an un-varnished and honest comparison of the current state of our democratic republic to those from history that devolved into autocratic rule will help us know if we are - as Franklin would say - keeping the republic or losing it.
It would be tedious to delve into the detail of each historical example, but I would urge my fellow citizens, our elected legislators, our judges, and the fourth estate (the press) to consider the following examples of nations that lost their way. We should all think about them not as irrelevant events from the dusty past, nor as events that took place in far off places, but instead in relation to our own democratic republic, to our current moment of deep divide and with a keen sense of what actions we might individually and collectively want to take to ensure that we are not condemned to repeat thee series of quiet and soft events that led to the loss of their democratic governance.
· On December 6, 1998 Hugo Chavez was elected President of Venezuela in a democratic election. Chavez transformed his position, the electoral processes thus devolving Venezuela into a despotic autocracy
· On April 6, 1924 democratic elections led to Benito Mussolini becoming head of the Italian government which ultimately resulted in the fascist dictatorship taking total control of the Italian state.
· Free and democratic elections in Germany led to Paul Von Hindenbug’s election as President and Hitler’s appointment as chancellor on January 30, 1933. Later that year, the Reichstag Fire Decree which nullified civil liberties and gave Hitler nearly dictatorial powers was issued by the democratically elected leadership. Upon the death of Hindenburg in 1934 Hitler transformed a democratic Germany into a dictatorship.
· Under Julius Cesar’s leadership and with the creation of the lex tritia, The Roman Republic (a touchstone and model for the founders of our nascent republic) devolved after 482 years of republican rule and senate governance into an imperial dictatorship.
To be sure, one could go on listing many other examples of democratic republics that became autocracies and dictatorships. Chili, Greece, Thailand, Republican Spain, France, Haiti, Egypt, Algeria, Meiji Japan, Putin’s Russia, and Brazil are just a few.
Americans might ask how our current situation (defined in part by our current President’s blatant lack of moral compass, lawless behavior and self serving actions combined with the utter failure of Congress and the judiciary branch to check his unbridled thirst for expanding his power and authority) is both dissimilar and similar to the power grabs by a few and the ensuing inactions by the many which ultimately undermined democratic governance in these other nations. Sadly, there may be more similarities between our current moment and these examples than we care to admit.
I do hope we can turn our country around. But to do that, we must be shaken free of our historical amnesia. That is in part the job of the press. The press should help us to see our current situation with a broader and more informed sense of the sweeping history of democracy and its loss. A history that is thousands of years old and which contains examples of terrible failures as well as lessons for successfully overcoming the challenges that we currently face. With a fuller awareness, we will surely see both our present situation and our future with a more honest and historically accurate appreciation for the fragility of democracy and with less of a false sense of destiny and invulnerability. As a nation in only our second century of being, we might want to reconsider our overconfident belief that devolution from democratic republic to autocracy under a strongman “could never happen here”.
My great-grandparents’ overconfidence that “it” could never happen in pre-war Germany did not serve them or their fellow Eastern European citizens well. My Venezuelan colleague’s faith over the past twenty years that his country would soon awaken and correct the nightmare of Chavez’s rule has likewise failed him and he now lives in exile in America. And finally, my Italian friend’s grandparents’ conviction that fascism could never take hold in Italy was remarkably misplaced. In spite of the belief of so many Americans that our nation is different, history tells us that democracy has always been fragile and that the underlying ideals are tenuous and easily trampled upon by the course desire for power that are and have always been part of the human condition. History also tells us that the demise of democracy often happens in small steps and unfolds in plain sight and often without any serious resistance until it is too late. Freedom is often lost as a result of sequential, relatively quiet changes and not with the proverbial singular bang from a cannon or the storming of government buildings. It is probable that our fragile democracy will survive its current challenges, but history also tells us that it is not just possible but probable that at some point we will look back and realize that what we are in the midst of now turned out to be our democracy’s relatively quiet and soft undoing. To be sure all endings have a beginning and perhaps this is ours. Let us not have to tell our children “we never saw what was happening until it was too late” or “we didn’t believe it could ever happen here or to us”. Americans should be cognizant of history in order to ensure that the descent towards tyranny does not become part of the story of the United States of America.
As Ben Franklin was in 1787, we should be guardedly optimistic about our democratic republic. But in February 2020, we should also be a little frightened by what is happening because in spite of our belief in our exceptionalism, this type of story has played out many times before and the final chapter was not always a happy one that ended in freedom and democracy in perpetuity.