Charles M. Blow: The Republican Party Is the Anti-Democracy Party

[Nevilledog]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/03/opinion/republican-party-anti-democracy.html

No paywall
https://archive.ph/fFzjm

The word “democracy” never appears in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.
However, democracy is central to the modern concept of America.

The founders seemed to prefer calling the burgeoning country a Republic rather than a democracy. Many were opposed to direct democracy and the possibility that demagogues could corrupt it or mob rule could overtake it. They instead designed a representative government in which “the people” would elect representatives who would make the laws and conduct the governance.

The problem, or course, was that their definition of “the people” was largely limited to wealthy white men, enslavers among them.

Over the years, America has expanded the definition of “the people” to include more Americans, but conservatives have resisted the expansion at every turn. And now, they are trying to drag the country backward, to pare down the ranks of those who can vote and to deny or invalidate elections in which voting populations, not yet pared down enough, deliver results with which they disagree.

We keep hearing people say that candidates, like some of the ones competing in Tuesday’s primaries, threaten our democracy. We heard during the Jan. 6 hearings about threats to our democracy. We have heard for years that Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy.

*snip*