In Defense of American Democracy

In Defense of American Democracy: Andy Ngo's New Book, Cowbells at Portland State, and Scaring Powell's Bookstore by Brandon Smith, guest contributor, June 15, 2021 (posted by Mary Grabar)

Nineteenth-century political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville declared a free press to be the most indispensable element of a functioning liberal democracy. Without the ability for journalists' thoughts and writings to be freely circulated, individuals in democratic nations may be isolated in their opinions. Yet combinations of private American citizens have attempted to stifle the dissemination of information compiled by certain journalists in order to achieve antidemocratic aims.

In between my separate stints of studying political science in community college and university, I developed a desire to gain a greater understanding of my own country's political system. I already learned to have a healthy fear of tyrannical majorities that tend to arise from pure democracies after studying James Madison's Federalist No. 10, but sought to differentiate such potentially repressive democracy from the character of American democracy as I conceptualized it. In examining Tocqueville's influential work Democracy in America, I realized America's early European settlers idealized political equality as many Americans do in the current age. However, it would take the recognition of certain liberties of its citizens for America to establish a system of political equality lest the freedom of minorities be trammeled by an overzealous majority. Tocqueville stressed the usefulness of a free press to act as a defense of oppressed members of a community through their ability to appeal to a national, or perhaps global, audience.

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What Happens When Law Schools Embrace Critical Race Theory?

What Happens When Law Schools Embrace Critical Race Theory? by Matthew Andersson, guest columnist (posted by Mary Grabar, June 9, 2021)

“The Equal Protection Clause affirmed that the Constitution protected the situations of individuals, not groups.  It is [otherwise] not a matter of unconstitutional subordination of one group to another, but of offensive segmentation by race.  A whole elite cadre depends on racial division for its constituency and its position.  Justices Powell and Marshall agreed that a single, unsegmented nation, where race did not matter, was the goal.  But if we continue to divide ourselves by race, to make race dispositive in all sorts of contexts, with the ugly necessity of formally assigning individuals to particular racial groups, then the time will soon come when this new racial segmentation will become permanent, that the ideal of each person’s being judged as an individual and not as a member of a group to which he is assigned by somebody’s “public policy” will no longer be possible.  Fifty years is long enough to make dividing us up by race a habit, to create a practically and politically unshakable sense of entitlement in those who think they benefit from such schemes, and in the racial entrepreneurs who know they do. It may be that the only way to get beyond racism is to just stop using race in a [reasonably short period].  Only with such a determinative end point will institutions have the incentive to confront the political pressure arrayed against a truly unitary concept of citizenship.”  Charles Fried, Harvard Law Beneficial Professor, former Associate Justice Supreme Judicial Court Massachusetts and Solicitor General of the United States, in Saying What the Law Is: The Constitution in the Supreme Court (2006) 239-240

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