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civil liberties
Beyond Authoritarian Rage:The Cultural Will to Democracy
While the slide into authoritarianism has perhaps reached the point of no return, which we cannot know for certain, now might instead be regarded as an exigent moment for revitalizing the spirit of democracy.
Jan 17, 2025
“Democratic laws and institutions can only function effectively when they are based on a culture of democracy.” —Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe (2018)
If political rage propels authoritarianism, what supports democratic governance? If a culture of democracy is required, is it attainable? Or has the slide into authoritarian rule crossed the point of no return? The time of cultural reckoning has arrived.
U.S. democracy, historically thin, is susceptible to demagoguery and oligarchy. As political philosopher Benjamin Barber observed decades ago, “the survival of democracy remains an open question.” It will endure “only as strong democracy,” secured by a competent, responsible, politically engaged, and well-informed citizenry; a lasting commitment to self-governance requires a civically educated public.
Strong democracy presupposes a culture of democracy.
What is a culture of democracy?
This question is so important that in 2018 the Council of Europe—an intergovernmental human rights organization representing 46 European member states—published a three-volume report dedicated to answering it. According to the report, a civic culture strong enough to sustain democratic institutions, laws, and practices consists of a full set of values, attitudes, and knowledge acted upon by the citizenry in public spaces. This is a high standard, especially for a markedly diverse country of over 300 million. It presumes adherence to key values, command of relevant knowledge, and proficiency in corresponding competencies.
Democratic values include a commitment to human dignity and rights, cultural diversity, equality, fairness, justice, the rule of law, and democratic procedures. Human rights apply universally, are safeguarded without distinction, and are exercised short of violating the rights of others. Respect for cultural diversity enables the contribution of diverse perspectives to public deliberation and decision-making. Decisions by majority or plurality vote are made without resort to coercion and with continuing respect for civil liberties.
Among democratic attitudes, openness to cultural diversity entails a suspension of prejudice and a willingness to cooperate with citizens of different cultural identities in a relationship of equality. An attitude of tolerance and respect presumes the intrinsic dignity and equality of others regardless of their differences. An attitude of civic mindedness and self-sufficiency involves a sense of interconnectedness among citizens, a concern for one another’s welfare, a willingness to serve the common good, an expectation of personal accountability, and a belief that one’s contribution can make a positive difference. Civic mindedness extends to dealing creatively and constructively with complexities, ambiguities, and uncertainties.
A functioning democracy requires a substantial investment in cultural knowledge, not just technical competency.
Implementing these values and attitudes requires various democratic competencies. Analytical thinking consists of logical and systematic analysis of issues and arguments together with critical thinking to make evaluative judgments about options and to sort out political propaganda, while recognizing that one’s own judgments are contingent on a working perspective. Active listening and close observation are required to appreciate subtleties, identify inconsistencies and omissions, and understand cultural differences. Empathy is requisite to apprehending the cognitive and affective orientation of people with dissimilar cultural backgrounds. Flexibility and adaptation to changing circumstances and experiences are necessary to reconsider fixed habits of thought. Competency in communication is needed to express opinions, ideas, and wants, to request and provide clarifications, to persuade and negotiate constructively, to compromise, cooperate, manage conflict, and build consensus.
The democratic knowledge expected of citizens is familiarity with the complexities of the larger world. It encompasses an understanding of political and legal concepts such as rights, equality, and justice as well as an awareness of how democratic institutions operate; knowledge of current affairs and the political views of others; knowledge of the history, texts, doctrines, practices, and diversity of religious traditions; understanding how history is constructed and shapes contemporary perceptions; knowing how media select, interpret, and edit information for various purposes, and their impact on the public’s judgment and behavior; understanding economic processes, their consequences for profit and employment, and their intersection with social, political, and environmental issues.
Is a culture of democracy attainable?
Even more than the above synopsis, the full text of democratic values, attitudes, knowledge, and competencies conveys an expectation that is well above the present capacity of publics in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere. This disjunction between aspiration and reality raises a question of feasibility. Can the public’s competencies be raised to a closer approximation of the ideal, to a level close enough for civic culture to support democratic politics?
The decline of liberal arts and civic education is indicative of the difficulty of answering the feasibility question affirmatively. Democratic culture is undermined rather than advanced by a commitment to technical and applied training at the expense of teaching the humanities, arts, and social sciences. A functioning democracy requires a substantial investment in cultural knowledge, not just technical competency. Nor can a balanced education be restricted to elites if the aim is to develop an able, well-informed public.
Beyond the deficit in formal education, lifelong civic learning is hampered by economic struggle, health crises, life’s everyday demands, violence riddled entertainment, sensationalized news media, and polarized politics. The country is caught in a downward political spiral exacerbated by its diminishing influence in the world, the economic disruption of globalization, inequity of wealth distribution, ongoing demographic shifts and migration, and imminent climate change, culminating in the election of a rightwing authoritarian regime. Under these circumstances, it is difficult to foresee a rise of civic culture above even the minimum needed to sustain thin democracy.
The value of an aspirational model as a gauge of the democratic deficit is that it can provide a goal and sense of direction for rectifying present deficiencies. The problem with an aspirational model is that the ideal can be too far removed from exigent circumstances, frustrated expectations, and fragmented politics to inspire commitment to a democratic future. It takes strong faith to bridge the gap and to move forward in an imperfect world.
Has faith in the democratic ideal expired?
Perhaps the spirit of democracy is most immediately in need of revival, if that is possible. An analytical ideal of democratic culture is abstract, literal, even antiseptic, and thus stripped of narrative texture and figurative transcendence. Absent a binding mythos, a people’s shared sentiment fades, and collective faith in democracy diminishes. The people are deprived of a political north star.
Just as Trumpism mobilizes the country’s dark impulses, historian Jon Meacham argues, the people must call upon their better angels and reach within the nation’s soul for a noble guiding vision. That “ancient and perennial” soul is an “immanent collection of convictions, dispositions, and sensitivities that shape character and inform conduct.” It is “the vital center, the core, the heart, the essence of life.”
Historian Heather Cox Richardson documents how the country’s antidemocratic leaders have rewritten the nation’s story to abandon the principle of equality. She also observes that Americans have managed, despite several close calls, to hold on to democratic principles for over three centuries, “however imperfectly they lived them.” In her view, “the true nature of American democracy … is, and has always been, a work in progress.” The task at hand in this “time of testing,” she writes, is one of “keeping the dream of equality alive.”
By these accounts, reawakening the spirit of democracy is a plausible undertaking. An imperfect citizenry might draw sustenance from its centuries-long, checkered quest for liberty and equality, and it might reasonably hope to muddle through dark times.
When robust democratic deliberation is rendered inherently destabilizing, the modes of responsible and active citizenship by a competent public are diminished.
That said, rhetorical scholar Jennifer Mercieca observes that the capacity of the citizenry to act democratically is “ambiguous.” American citizenship, depending on “whoever ‘the people’ are thought to be,” is a “conflicted, paradoxical, and complex” phenomenon that does not ensure the kind of national stability the Constitution was designed to protect. By representing active citizenship as a danger to stability, the country’s Constitutional founders strayed from the revolutionary conception of citizens actively watching and critiquing government, resisting corruption and oppression, and working for the common good. Over the course of time, a pseudo-democratic conception of citizenship, informed by an infantilizing discourse of a distempered public, a public that must be contained and constrained by political parties, has demoted citizens from decisionmakers to bystanders and relegated them to consumer status. When robust democratic deliberation is rendered inherently destabilizing, the modes of responsible and active citizenship by a competent public are diminished.
While the slide into authoritarianism has perhaps reached the point of no return, which we cannot know for certain, now might instead be regarded as an exigent moment for revitalizing the spirit of democracy. Reconstituting civic will would take a fugitive act in the Jeffersonian sense of instigating a little rebellion now and again—a rebellious interval of deliberative dissent with sufficient intensity and duration to jump start the democratic dream. There can be no guarantee, only a conviction that an effort to prevent the demise of democracy might succeed.
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To Thwart Trump Killing Spree, Biden Urged to Commute Death Penalty Cases
The former president, warned a broad rights coalition, "executed more people than the previous ten administrations combined."
Dec 09, 2024
A large and diverse coalition of broad coalition of rights organizations on Monday sent a letter to U.S. President Biden Monday, urging him to commute the sentences of all 40 individuals who are on federal death row.
The letter adds to a chorus of voices—including prosecutors and law enforcement officials—advocating for Biden to use his clemency powers to issue such commutations before he departs office.
The calls for Biden to issue pardons and commutations have only grown since the president issued a pardon for his son, clearing Hunter Biden of wrongdoing in any federal crimes he committed or may have committed in the last 11 years.
The joint letter to Biden was backed by over 130 organizations, including the ACLU, Brennan Center for Justice, and The Sentencing Project, commends his administration's "actions to repudiate capital punishment, including imposing a moratorium on executions for those sentenced to death, and for publicly calling for an end to the use of the death penalty during your 2020 campaign. In the face of a second Trump administration, more is necessary."
"President Trump executed more people than the previous ten administrations combined. Of those he executed, over half were people of color: six Black men and one Native American. The only irreversible action you can take to prevent President-elect Trump from renewing his execution spree, as he has vowed to do, is commuting the death sentences of those on federal death row now," the letter states.
The letter cites additional reasons that Biden ought to commute the sentences, including that the death penalty "has been rooted in slavery, lynchings, and white vigilantism."
A separate letter to Biden—sent in November by group of attorneys general, law enforcement officials, and others—argues that "condemning people to death by the state does not advance public safety. The death penalty fails as an effective deterrent and does not reduce crime. As an outdated, error-riddled, and racially-biased practice, its continued use—and the potential for its abuse—erodes public trust in the criminal legal system and undermines the legitimacy of the entire criminal legal system."
Matt Bruenig, president of the People's Policy Project think tank, directly tied Biden's inaction on this issue to the pardon he issued for his son in a blog post last week, writing that "if Biden does not act, there is little doubt that Trump will aggressively schedule executions in his next term. Their blood will primarily be on Trump's hands, but, if Biden does not act to prevent it, his hands will be bloody too."
The call for commutations for death row prisoners aligns with a wider push for the President to use his clemency powers before he leaves office.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who has been particularly vocal on this issue, said Sunday on social media that President Biden "must use his clemency power to change lives for the better. And we have some ideas on who he can target: Folks in custody with unjustified sentencing disparities, the elderly and chronically ill, people on death row, women punished for crimes of their abusers, and more."
Pressley was one of over 60 members of Congress who sent a letter to Biden last month, encouraging Biden to intervene to help these groups.
Several lawmakers have specific pardons or commutations in mind, according to Axios. For example, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has urged Biden to pardon Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has called for a pardon of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, per Axios.
So far, Biden has granted far fewer clemency petitions (161 total) than former President Barrack Obama, according to the Department of Justice's Office of the Pardon Attorney, and a few dozen less than President-elect Trump did during his entire first presidency. However, in 2022, Biden did grant full and unconditional pardons to all U.S. citizens convicted of simple federal marijuana possession—a move that was cheered by advocates.
According to The New York Times, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last week that Biden was expected to make more clemency announcements "at the end of his term."
"He's thinking through that process very thoroughly," she said.
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Safeguarding Free Speech and Protecting Civil Rights in America
This bill is not just a threat to pro-Palestinian organizations; it endangers any group that engages in dissent or challenges government policies.
Nov 18, 2024
Congress is once again attempting to silence pro-Palestinian voices and restrict free speech. After failing to secure a two-thirds majority last Tuesday, House leaders are bringing HR 9495 back for a vote today, attempting to pass it with a simple majority. It is deeply concerning that they are doubling down on this dangerous bill—one that would deal a severe blow to free speech and place pro-Palestinian nonprofits and other advocacy organizations in peril. We must unite to defeat this legislation.
Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire for retribution against those he perceives as adversaries. On the campaign trail, he has alluded to taking aggressive actions, joking about being a dictator on "day one" in office, pledging to jail journalists, and threatening to retaliate against political foes. As his return to the White House looms, Congress is moving to hand a Trump administration a powerful tool that could be wielded against ideological opponents in civil society.
Up for a potential new vote as early as today in the House of Representatives, the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, also known as HR 9495, would grant the Secretary of the Treasury unilateral authority to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit deemed to be a "terrorist-supporting organization." The bill's vague and overreaching language lacks clear definitions and safeguards, effectively empowering the federal government to investigate and penalize nonprofits based solely on their First Amendment-protected advocacy for human rights. This bill is not just a threat to pro-Palestinian organizations; it endangers any group that engages in dissent or challenges government policies.
The ramifications of HR 9495 are clear: if passed, this law could subject countless nonprofit organizations to harassment, investigation, and unjust penalties simply for engaging in lawful, constitutionally protected advocacy.
For me, this fight is deeply personal. Over 113 of my family members have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces. This tragic loss has driven me to dedicate my life to advocating for peace, justice, and an end to the suffering that plagues the region. Yet, instead of honoring the rights of individuals who have lost loved ones to violence, Congress is attempting to silence us by pushing bills like HR 9495 that effectively criminalize our grief, our commitment to peace, and our calls for justice. Such legislation adds insult to injury and undermines the principles of freedom and democracy that America professes to uphold.
The ramifications of HR 9495 are clear: if passed, this law could subject countless nonprofit organizations to harassment, investigation, and unjust penalties simply for engaging in lawful, constitutionally protected advocacy. It sets a chilling precedent, blurring the line between political dissent and terrorism in ways that erode our democratic freedoms. By threatening to silence voices advocating for Palestinian human rights, Congress is betraying the constitutional values it claims to uphold, including freedom of speech, association, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Our elected officials must protect the constitutional rights of all citizens and organizations, regardless of political ideology or perspective. Now is the time to defend—not restrict—the essential rights that sustain our democracy.
HR 9495 would be a powerful tool to stifle crucial debate about U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East if enacted. It would discourage honest conversations about our nation's role in impacting human rights abroad and inhibit the exchange of ideas necessary for a healthy democracy. For families like mine, this bill adds another layer of trauma—stripping us of the right to speak out about the suffering we have experienced firsthand. It sends a message that our pain is inconsequential and that advocating for peace and justice is unwelcome or, worse, punishable.
Historically, efforts to suppress dissent have never boded well for democracy. From the Red Scare to the Civil Rights Movement, we have seen the dangers of allowing the government to silence voices under the guise of national security. Such actions often lead to the marginalization of minority communities and the erosion of civil liberties for all. HR 9495 threatens to repeat these dark chapters of our history by giving the Treasury Department unchecked power without adequate oversight or accountability.
From the Red Scare to the Civil Rights Movement, we have seen the dangers of allowing the government to silence voices under the guise of national security.
We must ask ourselves: what kind of nation do we want to be? Do we want to uphold the principles of freedom and justice enshrined in our Constitution, or do we want to drift toward authoritarianism, where dissent is punished and minority voices are suppressed? Advocating for peace should never be a crime, and punishing those who do so only deepens the injustices we strive to confront.
We urge members of Congress to reconsider this dangerous path and vote down HR 9495 and any similar legislation that may arise in the future. Our elected officials must protect the constitutional rights of all citizens and organizations, regardless of political ideology or perspective. Now is the time to defend—not restrict—the essential rights that sustain our democracy. By defeating HR 9495, Congress can reaffirm our nation's commitment to justice, free speech, and the power of peaceful advocacy.
In addition to legislative action, we call upon civil society, community leaders, and everyday citizens to raise their voices against this bill. Contact your representatives, write to your local newspapers, and engage in peaceful demonstrations to show that we will not stand by while our rights are eroded. It is through action and solidarity that we can safeguard our collective freedoms.
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