“We weren’t there to steal things. We weren’t there to do damage. We were just there to overthrow the government.”
The 56-year-old woman from Michigan was not screaming. She wasn’t shouting. There were no bulging veins in her forehead. It was January 6, 2021, at the Capitol in Washington D.C. Her statement was matter of fact.
“We were just there to overthrow the government.”
We are living in the “upside-down.” January 6 participants are labelled either insurrectionists or patriots. Criminals or hostages. We hear recordings of the "Star-Spangled Banner” performed by individuals jailed for crimes related to the January 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol. At a Trump rally, the announcer intones:
“Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the horribly and unfairly treated January 6th hostages."
And all because the firehose of “stop the steal” and other falsehoods have become entrenched in the minds of so many Americans. They believe that the 2020 election was stolen. They believe that Trump has been the rightful president since 2017. And they believe that the 2024 result is a foregone conclusion. In the upside-down.
We are not the first to debate the raiments of our government. “A republic if you can keep it,” Benjamin Franklin was to have said. James Madison, a key architect of the Constitution, used the terms "republic" and "democracy" interchangeably over his lifetime. In Federalist No. 14, he distinguished between a "pure democracy" of direct rule by the people and a "republic" of representative government, but considered both to be forms of popular rule. Constitutional democracy, liberal democracy, radical democracy.
These terms rankle. Scholars are not in agreement. Founder John Adams took aim at Thomas Paine’s far too “democratical” ideas in Common Sense. He called the pamphlet a “crapulous mass.” “Crapulous” doesn’t mean what it sounds like despite the collapse of contemporary standards of discourse. Adams was referring to Paine’s “crapulous” work as drunken and fueled by alcohol. Adams was indignant. How could Paine promote allowing white men who did not own property the right to vote and hold public office. The very idea!
We’ve come a long way. Or have we? Yes, if we acknowledge the ascendence of more and more equal rights in a series of Constitutional amendments. No, as we witness attempts to chip away at those rights. The tensions between majority and minority rule are playing out in our courts and our legislatures and our executive branches of government with no resolution expected anytime soon.
When William F. Buckley Jr. published God and Man at Yale in 1951, he was arguing against the bipartisan liberal consensus that the federal government should protect civil rights, provide a basic social safety net, and build infrastructure. His alternative was to promote Christianity and free enterprise.
That thinking is gaining momentum again in American life. In fact, rebellion against liberal traditions has never been extinguished. There has always been an anti-liberal vein running through our society despite the belief fostered by Martin Luther King that “the arc of the moral universe is long but bends toward justice.”
As we look toward that justice, which was certainly not evident in the original Constitution, we embrace a radical set of principles that all human beings are created equal—an equality that guarantees certain inalienable rights that do not derive from religious belief but are “self-evident.” They are not granted by God, by the crown, or by the Constitution. Until the American Revolution no government had ever been founded on these liberal principles. Imagine an 18th century emperor ceding the principle of universal and enforceable equal rights.
And now?
Liberal democracy is under threat. It could be torn apart. Soon.
Across the 2024 political landscape, governments-in-waiting are prepared to implement anti-liberal policies in a future “sympathetic” administration.
Project 2025 has designs on women, their bodily autonomy, immigrants, vulnerable minorities, education, and so much more. Trump claims that he knows nothing about Project 2025. In a backflip worthy of Olympian gold, he claims he knows nothing about it, but disagrees with it. Nonsense. Political actors well-known to him have their fingerprints all over it. Lately, Project 2025 has broken through the American psyche. Now Trump is desperately trying to tamp it down with softened positions on abortion and same sex-marriage in the GOP party platform. More nonsense. Fetal personhood embraced by extremists rules out a woman’s right to choose. Homosexuality is anathema to Christian nationalism. They’re all part of Project 2025 whether Trump is prepared to admit his connection to it or not.
There’s more.
Scholars at the Claremont Institute are opposed to the founding fathers' ideal of division between church and state.
Seven Mountain Dominionism proposes to take over every aspect of organized American life known as the “seven mountains” including: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government.
Christian Nationalism spouts an theocratic political ideology posing as religion.
The Center for Renewing America is dedicated to disempowering the so-called administrative state largely through dismantling the expertise of career civil servants.
America First Policy Institute is a research haven of right-wing populists.
America First Legal argues cases before the court attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion in all its forms including so-called “woke corporation” human resource practices.
The list of antidemocratic organizations is long, well-funded, and coherent. They define the United States as a white Christian country, repudiating the separation of church and state. They view the nation as under siege from secular forces.
These groups feel aggrieved, claiming they are deprived of their "freedom" to impose religious and racial views on society. Their concept of "freedom of conscience" demands replacing a country built on individual rights with a Christian commonwealth. They envision a new culture taking root - one that preserves order, promotes public morality, and aspires to a heavenly kingdom beyond this life. Beyond the graveyard.
Glenn Ellmers, a Claremont scholar, writes:
“The only road forward is overturning the existing post-American order."
He echoing the rhetoric of overthrowing and revolting. Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation and key architect of Project 2025, teed up a threat of stochastic violence just before Independence Day:
"We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be."
Antidemocratic forces present a clear and present danger to the foundations of American democracy. Whether Trump admits he knows about them or not, they would fundamentally alter the nature of the republic as we know it. We can’t give them that chance.
And whistling past the graveyard won’t cut it.
Next week:
Whistling Past the Graveyard
Part 2—Howls from Beyond
Resources and Recommendations
The America First Policy Institute
Applebaum, Anne, The New Propaganda War, The Atlantic Magazine (May 6, 2024)
The Authoritarian Playbook For 2025: How An Authoritarian President Will Dismantle Our Democracy - January 2024 - A Report By United To Protect Democracy. Also available as pdf at The Authoritarian Playbook For 2025
Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty Christians Against Christian Nationalism
Christian Nationalism and the January 6, 2021, Insurrection. A Joint Project from Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC) and the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF)
Cohen, Roger, Just How Dangerous Is Europe’s Rising Far Right? New York Times (May 5, 2024)
Freedom from Religion Foundation
Gopnik, Adam. The Forgotten History of Hitler's Establishment Enablers, The New Yorker Magazine (March 18, 2024)
Kagan, Robert. Rebellion: How Antiliberalism is Tearing America Apart - Again. New York: Penguin Random House, 2024.
Kagan, Robert, We have a radical democracy. Will Trump Voters Destroy It? Washington Post (April 24, 2024)
Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project "The 2025 Presidential Transition Project paves the way for an effective conservative Administration based on four pillars: a policy agenda, Presidential Personnel Database, Presidential Administration Academy, and playbook for the first 180 days of the next Administration."
Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” Heritage Foundation, 2023.
Richardson, Heather Cox, Letters from An American, Daily Substack
Ryback, Timothy W. Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power. New York: Knopf, 2024.