The difference between dictatorship and democracy is us! Are we willing to obey the dictator? It’s easy to pin the blame for dictatorship on a Hitler or a Trump but everything depends on our willingness to obey. Everyone has a job to do, and if we define our jobs as obedience, it’s all over. It’s our willingness to let people pick people off the street or out of their homes or jobs without courts, without due process, or any process. At that point there are no protections because there are no protectors.
Trump in his first term was frustrated by the unwillingness of the military to enforce his will on civilians, outside of war or combat, and outside of the system of justice. They were doing their job by the rules. So, this time he has been avoiding anyone who might resist his orders and has been ignoring military qualifications. That’s very dangerous. Well-trained officers are taught not to honor illegal orders. But sycophants will do anything.
How do we deal with that? America is driven by public opinion, even outside of elections. If we are united against breaching the walls of the Constitution and due process, then the people in the military and the police are more likely to get their backs up and say, no it’s not my job to enforce illegal orders and I won’t do it. At that point dictatorship doesn’t happen.
That’s the meaning of the many demonstrations that groups are organizing. It’s not about convincing Trump about what he ought to do. It’s about stiffening the backs of all those people he wants to enforce orders that have no place in a free society.
Freedom belongs to all of us. A society where some people have freedom to do what they want and others don’t is not a free society or a safe society for any of us. At that point what happens to you has nothing to do with whether you have followed the rules or whether for any reason you deserve to be locked up. Citizen? Doesn’t matter. Ancestors go back to the Mayflower? Doesn’t matter. And you never get to prove your legitimacy or even complain. Killed in what they call detention? Your family has no rights.
Madison and his fellow Founders described tyranny as the combination of all powers in a single person – accuser, prosecutor, judge, jury, executioner – whether it happens on the local, state or national level. No one can or should be trusted with that kind of power. Everyone either thinks they’re right or doesn’t care but it stops mattering. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Our lives, our families, our wealth, our retirement, our homes, jobs and businesses all become there for the taking. Think you’re on the right side of the boss? That’s nice, until you’re not, or you have something the boss wants. That’s no longer a free society – that’s hell, a form of slavery. Think you can’t be enslaved because you’re white? The serfs were white and almost all of us can trace ourselves back to the serfs.
Regulations are rules that have to be followed. And there is a system for making sure they are followed. You really don’t like regulation? Then everything you have is up for grabs. Congratulations.
It's our job to prevent that world from happening here. From the top to the bottom it’s up to us to resist.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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