Our Democratic Institutions Aren’t ‘Broken’ Just Because They Say No

Sunday on “Meet the Press,” the former vice president of America, Albert Gore Jr., declared, “democracy is broken,” a notion that puts our constitutional liberties at risk in the name of saving them. Mr. Gore sees global warming/climate change as a threat to the earth itself and has become the world’s wealthiest Chicken Little advocating for his position, only to see the sky remain in place beyond every date he’s predicted for its fall.Undaunted, he’s not willing to trust something as messy as the will of the people and their elected representatives to keep the moon and stars in orbit. In his interview, Mr. Gore held up the Senate filibuster as proof that our democracy is busted. True, it has been used in evil causes, such as his father, Senator Albert Gore Sr., filibustering the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Yet the system functioned as designed. Americans saw the folly of treating African Americans as second-class citizens and — with more Republicans than Democrats — advanced their equality.Americans used liberties the Constitution provided, and did the hard work of marching, lobbying, and exposing the wrongheadedness of those like Gore Sr. who sought to maintain white supremacy.Although the same tools are available to Gore the Younger, he resists making his case, refusing even to debate the supposed impending doom, and denigrating the unconvinced as “deniers.” Like spoiled children who blame their Atari 2600 controller for losing at Pac-Man, such crusaders insist that our institutions are “broken” whenever they don’t get their way.Our immigration system is often said to be “broken,” despite millions of Americans — including my wife — going through the system and achieving citizenship. The Supreme Court, now that it has an originalist majority, is also derided as “broken,” whereas the left not only felt it was running like a top when it advanced their agenda, they declared that even criticizing it to be an assault on — you guessed it — democracy. In 2009, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times argued America’s “one-party democracy is worse” than Communist China’s “one-party autocracy” for the same reason as Mr. Gore.“One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks,” Mr. Friedman conceded, yet “when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.” “That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.” Well, America is meeting the challenges of the 21st century just fine — thanks to the longest governing constitution in existence, not in spite of it.In a 2010 TV appearance, Mr. Friedman again raised the question. “What if we could just be China for one day?” he asked. “[W]e could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions … on everything from the economy to environment.” It’s true that leftist schemes have failed in Congress just as right-wing ones have, but as radio host Derek Hunter remarked, “Congress not acting is Congress acting.”Or in the lyrics of the song “Freewill” by the rock band Rush, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” This is how our Constitution works. It provides mechanisms to confront any crisis and doesn’t allow our leaders to bypass the legislature when the going gets tough, a fatal flaw of the Weimar Republic.History is full of leaders who declared democracy failed and demanded one-man rule as the solution. During the Great Depression, a manifest crisis, the so-called Wall Street Putsch sought to oust President Franklin Roosevelt and replace him with General Smedley Butler.Their stated goal was also couched in soothing terms: To “help” the president and the people by bringing a brand of the fascism that seemed to be doing gangbusters in Italy and Germany.Should he seek to help save the nation today, Mr. Gore is free to again run for the presidency, what with the Democrats longing to replace President Biden in 2024. But should he reach the White House, he’ll swear an oath. It requires the president to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” and that promise remains in effect throughout his entire term — even if the sky is falling.

Our Democratic Institutions Aren’t ‘Broken’ Just Because They Say No

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