Charles Cooke of National Review Online ponders liberals’ recent worries about potentially illiberal government policies.
By a remarkable coincidence, on the same day that Donald Trump became president-elect of the United States, the progressive Left discovered a distaste for illiberalism. Writing on behalf of the “many scholars/journalists who study illiberal/authoritarian regimes” — all of whom are “deeply alarmed about [the] US right now” — Dartmouth’s Brendan Nyhan announced via Twitter that the twelve days since the 2016 election had been the “most alarming” of his “professional life.” The United States, Nyhan explained, was close to seeing a total collapse of the “norms of our democracy,” in part because “our institutions/elites keep accommodating illiberal behavior.” “Should democracy fail,” he warned, “there will be no one moment,” but rather a “slow descent into illiberalism.” A “slow descent” that began on November 9, 2016, mind you. A “slow descent” that came ex nihilo.
A “slow descent” that followed a perfectly flat plane, and for which the president-elect’s predecessor bears no responsibility. Intrigued, I asked Nyhan whether he would consider recent trends toward judicial imperialism, executive overreach, and the abandonment of due process as undermining the “norms of our democracy” – and, in concert, whether as a college professor in 2016 he might have any insight into which “institutions” or “elites” have been most aggressively “accommodating illiberal behavior.” His response? The problems to which I was pointing were “not the same thing.” “This is not an NRO culture-war thing,” Nyhan griped.
It seems that “tyrannize” is one of those irregular verbs: I engage in the culture war; you undermine democratic norms; he’s ushering in Nazi Germany. It is uncontroversial to observe that Donald Trump was a poor choice for the head of a free republic, and I will gladly add my name to those who hope, as Burke put it, to “snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.” But I cannot help noticing how silly and how capricious our newfangled doomsayers sound. How quickly did those who have cried “Obstructionism!” for eight years expect to be welcomed as bulwarks of Madison’s Constitution? How seriously did the purveyors of “privilege” imagine they would be taken when they abandoned overnight the claim that neutral principles are but a tool of the ruling class? In what manner did those who praised Obama’s “pen and phone” believe they would be received when the shoe was on the other foot? And, if excesses in pursuit of one’s goal are criticized only as part of a mere “culture-war thing,” why should anyone worry about Trump?
