As we celebrate American independence, our democracy is at risk [View all]
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Source: East County Magazine
July 4, 2024 (San Diego) - Today, we celebrate our nation's declaration of independence from Britain's king in 1776. But ironically, America's democracy is at risk, along with the liberties we cherish. Constitutional experts warn that like several failed democracies, most notably Germany in the 1930s, the United States now faces the very real threat of becoming an autocracy, or dictatorship.
The threat is two-fold: first, a document called Project 2025 is a blueprint for converting our democracy to an autocracy and the guidebook for a second Trump term of office. Second, a Supreme Court ruling this week effectively grants Trump, Biden, or any future president king-like authority to break the law without fear of prosecution for crimes.
Steven Levitsky, coauthor of the award-winning, bestselling book How Democracies Die states, "Democracies may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders--presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power. Some of these leaders dismantle democracy quickly, as Hitler did in the wake of the 1933 Reichstag fire in Germany. More often, though, democracies erode slowly, in barely visible steps." He further warns, "This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy--packing and "weaponizing" the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence), and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents. The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy's assassins use the very institutions of democracy--gradually, subtly, and even legally--to kill it."
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Read more: https://www.eastcountymagazine.org/we-celebrate-american-independence-our-democracy-risk
Please share widely with those not yet familiar with the dire threats to American democracy.
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