Why the American experiment is a challenge for democracy
The United States could be described as an experiment with human nature. With neither throne nor altar to prop it up, can a purely secular constitution, based on the principles of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, handle all the clashes and contradictions inherent in any human society without falling apart? The whole world has a stake in the experiment’s success. The present crisis bears the name of Donald J. Trump, though he did not invent the instabilities and contradictions he and his supporters seek to exploit. The crisis comes in two forms. In the first version, only too familiar, Donald Trump lost the 2020 Presidential election but refused to admit defeat, instead embarking on a dishonest campaign to have the result overturned. To do so he had to implant the idea that the Democratic Party, acting on behalf of his rival Joe Biden, had engaged in an immense conspiracy to subvert American democracy, and impose – loosely defined – unacceptable “liberal” values. Regardless of the lack of solid evidence, the conviction that the American political system has been subverted on behalf of Joe Biden and the Democrats is the second version of the crisis. This has become the “alternative fact”: that the rule of law and the US Constitution on which it is based have been “weaponised”, to use the language of Trump’s supporters, for partisan political ends. Their alleged aim was to keep Trump out of power in 2020, and is now to stop him returning to power after the next Presidential elections in November 2024. Neither version of the crisis questions the fundamental parameters of American democracy set out in the ten constitutional amendments listed in the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791. The Founding Fathers of the United States were well aware of the inherent weaknesses in any political system. They had just expelled the British version from their soil and sought to learn from its vices and flaws, while keeping such virtues as had endured. The very concept of a Bill of Rights was British. What was distinctly American was the emphasis on freedom as a good in itself, established by a structure of legal rights: freedom to bear arms (albeit within a “well ordered militia”), freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of the Press, freedom of assembly, freedom to seek redress for grievances.
What is also distinctly American, however, is the way these freedoms have been amplified until they threaten the whole edifice. The unbridled nature of US social media and outlets such as Fox News have made Trump’s attacks on the integrity of the judicial system call in question the very possibility of conducting fair legal proceedings against him. “Contempt of court” is a very weak concept in American legal culture. Trump’s threat, “If you go after me I’m coming after you,” is clearly aimed at anyone who gives evidence against him. Can an impartial jury be assembled to try such a case? If not, he can henceforth break the law with impunity. There are implied unwritten conventions in US politics that are just as important as the written ones, such as that losers should accept defeat, political debate should be truthful, and that integrity counts. They bring moral values to bear on the conduct of public life. But from where does America deduce them? Pope Benedict’s words to the British in his papal address in Westminster Hall in 2010 are especially relevant to the US today. “By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved?” he asked. “These questions take us directly to the ethical foundations of civil discourse. If the moral principles underpinning the democratic process are themselves determined by nothing more solid than social consensus, then the fragility of the process becomes all too evident. Herein lies the real challenge for democracy.”
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