Uncompromising commitment to the Rule of Law is the foundational idea of democracy.
What separates a rule-based liberal constitutional democracy from an authoritarian one—or from outright autocracy—is the neutrality of institutions, especially the Department of Justice and the independence of the judiciary. Above all, it is the uncompromising commitment to the Rule of Law that is the foundational idea of democracy.
The rule of law lies at the very heart of democratic governance. Yet when Donald Trump openly declares that he first makes a list of enemies to target and prosecute, and then seeks to fabricate evidence against them, it reveals a profoundly distorts our understanding of how democracy should function.
In a true democracy, institutions must remain impartial. They are not tools to gratify the whims of a leader. The President cannot and must not dictate who is to be investigated or prosecuted; such decisions must flow from law that is impartially executed, not from loyalty or vendetta. When justice is subservient to the personal desires of one man, democracy is no longer healthy—it is faltering, unstable, even immature. Sadly, America today increasingly falls into that first category.
The American Revolution itself was born out of fear of royal absolutism—fear of a system where the people’s interests and choices were rendered subservient to the dictates of one man. How tragic, then, that those who once prided themselves on guarding against tyranny must now witness their own institutions corrode under the pressures of authoritarian temptation.
History teaches us that the slide into authoritarianism is deceptively but dangerously easy: power is slowly being centralized in the hands of a narcissistic, delusional autocrat. But history also teaches us that climbing back is a long, bitter, and often devastating struggle. The American Revolution was one such triumph over autocracy in the figure of King George III.
One fears, however, that another such struggle may again become necessary—may God forbid—to free America from the dangerous delusion that faltering institutions should not be reformed, but replaced altogether with a system far more sinister. For history stands as a silent witness: authoritarianism has never brought peace or lasting prosperity to any nation.
If only every time we get a dime when someone attributes the causes of the rise of Trump and his brand of sinister authoritarian inclinations and actions to economic fears of falling behind middle classes, American economy lagging behind China and India in the race of globalization, consequences of economic policies that favored green energy, financialization, deindustrialization and such countless others.
But the essential question is in 250 years of journey of America as a nation are such crises non-existent? Hasn’t America faced and conquered such challenges countless times in its history?
But this time, however, is different. Many Americans have lost hope in the American Dream and seem to have given up.
Martin Luther King Jr, in his July 4, 1965, Independence Day speech beautifully described and defined the idea of American Dream
“American Dream, which is one of the things that distinguishes our form of government with some of the other totalitarian systems. It says that each individual has certain inherent rights that are neither derived from or conferred by the state. They are gifts from the hands of the Almighty God. Very seldom, if ever, in the history of the world, has a sociopolitical document expressed in such profound, eloquent, and unequivocal language the dignity and the worth of human personality. For the American Dream reminds us that every man is an heir of a legacy of wrathfulness.”
Tragedy in America is not that American is less wealthy, less prosperous or less powerful, truth is to the contrary. But the tragedy is two part.
First, the social compact at the individual level is fraying: America should be a land where every person feels equal in worth, where every individual has the opportunity to realize their fullest potential.
Contrary to this historic vision of America as a land of liberty, equality and opportunity, Trump loyalists, MAGA camp, fringe right-wing radicals claim that Christian Nationalism should be and has always been at the core of American identity and white Americans should have first and primary claim over the American identity.
But let us recognize the obvious, historic fact that the same conservatives who wallow in self-pity about the supposed economic backwardness of white America have consistently been denying the historically undeniable truth that for majority years of America as a nation or as an independent nation white people’s wealth was created on the foundations of slavery or drudgery of Black or coloured Americans.
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