In his recent “fascist” speech, President Biden attacked former President Trump and his MAGA supporters as a dangerous, extremist threat to American democracy since they opposed gay marriage, abortion, the rule of law, the right to privacy, the Constitution itself, even the sanctity of free elections.

While the President’s speech has drawn the most media attention, it is only part of a wider and ongoing effort to demonize those who oppose the Democratic Party’s radical agenda. This attack, however, ignores the politics favored by President Trump. Instead, this speech is an exercise in language manipulation to advance Biden’s case as if renaming alters reality.  

Two elements in this weaponization of language are particularly notable: the use of “democracy” to extol what Democrats specifically want, and the demonization of opponents, particularly state legislatures, as extremists intent on depriving Americans of their fundamental rights.  This is sophistry on a grand scale.  

The Misuse of “Democracy”

Throughout our history, “democracy” has been generally understood as a form of government resting on popular support as expressed through elections. On occasions democracy includes direct policymaking (initiatives) but more generally it entails people electing leaders who then heed the public will. Despite what the President claims, policy content is irrelevant, so being pro or anti the LGTBT+ agenda cannot certify one as being anti-democratic. Democracy is a process, and restrictive voting laws can be democratic if enacted by a popularly elected legislature and signed into law by the elected executive. Despite what the President implies, democracy is not a synonym for “good policy.”

State Legislatures

Given that most of the opposition from the Democrat’s radical agenda has come from states, President Biden, like many of his fellow Democrats, tends to view state legislatures with alarm. Notable example of the “bad” policies enacted by the states includes limiting abortion, tightening access to the ballot, supporting parental control of their children’s education, curbing the transgender movement, resisting vaccination mandates, and other conservative policies anathema to the Left. The antipathy for state legislatures is hardly surprising given the preponderance of Republican control over these bodies. His rhetoric might differ if the Democratic Party dominated state legislatures.

But, to characterize the conservative policies promoted by state legislatures as “…an ongoing attack on democracy” or as a campaign to roll back the clock on human rights, profoundly misunderstands the democratic role of state legislatures. The reality is that from the ratification of the Constitution onward, state legislatures, especially lower houses, have been deemed the most democratic of all our political institutions, so if there is to be an authentic voice of the people, it will originate from state legislatures.

The very nature of state legislatures promotes their democratic character. Here election districts are small, so candidates need not run expensive campaigns, nor be wealthy themselves, and can easily mingle with constituents. Voters may also be more likely to know their representatives while traveling to the state capitol to conduct official business is more convenient than trips to Washington D.C., and thus allows those with regular jobs to serve as lawmakers. For these reasons, state legislators are undoubtedly a decent cross section of those who elect them.

Democrats and Kritarchy

Judged by the policies that President Biden and his supporters prefer, they are fans of  kritarchy, not democracy. Kritarchy means “rule by judges,” and while historically rare, it has occurred. So, when President Biden insists that the right to an abortion is a democratic right, and state legislatures are invalidating this democratic right, they are saying that judges write laws in stone and just hand it down, and how dare popularly elected state legislatures disagree. For some Democratic Party ideologues, Roe v. Wade is the equivalent of the Ten Commandments.    

Kritarchy is inherently undemocratic. Allowing five unelected judges (a majority of the nine sitting Supreme Court justices) to invalidate choices made by elected officials sanctifies hidden sausage-making politics. The written opinions need not explain how the decision was made and, conceivably, the outcome merely reflects personal ideology with a fig leaf of legal jargon. Moreover, unlike legislators, federal judges serve for life and, outside of exceedingly rare impeachment, cannot be held accountable for their decisions. Yes, legislators made mistakes, but voters can reverse them at the next election but what if the Supreme Court botches it?  Reversal, even if the justices want to reverse, may require decades until the case with the appropriate legal elements arrives. Such paralysis hardly advances democracy.

Furthermore, unlike what occurs in legislatures, there can be no wide-ranging, vigorous public debate so vital to democracy. At best, lawyers may argue arcane points before the court (and debates cannot be televised), so the normal give-and-take of democratic politics becomes limited to shrill demonstration outside the court. Indeed, attempts to go beyond legal tactics such as submitting amicus curiae briefs are legally restricted -- we want to keep judges above the political process. To insist that deciding public policy via the courts is somehow more democratic than legislative politicking is but a ruse to defend “good” outcomes such as same-sex marriage as “democratic.”

All About Politics

This is Politics 101: the Democratic Party’s current agenda is a radical one, far more appealing to a small elite then ordinary Americans, so it makes political sense to sway a few appointed judges versus convincing hundreds of elected legislators.  This reflects strategy -- talk democracy, rely on unelected judges -- not a genuine endorsement of democracy. And in today’s political landscape, it makes perfect sense: a Harvard-educated judge is more likely to favor transgender rights than a farmer elected to the Kansas state legislature. And for good measure, once the judge hands down a ruling, good luck in reversing it. Totally different from dealing with laws enacted by legislatures -- unhappy constituents can toss out the Kansas farmer next election.

The strategy of talking “democracy” while relying on unelected judges is particularly obvious in the ongoing battle over teaching Critical Race Theory in schools. The Left knows that elected state officials, being publicly accountable, are generally inhospitable to CRT and similar radical ideas. Just visualize CRT advocates testifying in the Florida state legislature. By contrast, the odds are much better if the aim is to convince a single judge appointed for life, even in the reddest of the red states, that the First Amendment permits teachers to instruct students in almost anything imaginable.

The reliance on judges – kritarchy -- may explain why congressional confirmation hearings on judges, especially Supreme Court Justices, attract so many lefties willing to invent sex scandals or personal attacks (“Borking”), to advance their agenda.  The courts, not state legislatures, is their political homefield advantage.  

President Biden’s speech and similar rhetoric emanating from the party’s Left wing is worse than run-of-the-mill mendacious campaign rhetoric. It is one thing to mischaracterize same-sex marriage as “the right to marry who you love,” (a policy that Oedipus might favor), quite another to label the opposition as insurrectionists and enemies of democracy intent on subverting the Constitution. Like so much of what the Left does, this deceitful rhetoric debases the language and misconstrues history versus justifying policies on their merits. What, exactly, are semi-fascists? How did castration become “gender-affirming surgery”? It is only a matter of time before “debates “become Towers of Newspeak Babel, not reasoned discussions over policy. Hard to imagine any good coming out of this boiling of the pot.  

Image: Pexels