{"id":12234,"date":"2018-06-29T15:23:11","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T19:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=12234"},"modified":"2018-07-02T12:39:55","modified_gmt":"2018-07-02T16:39:55","slug":"the-hill-another-state-democracy-report-ignores-plummeting-trust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/29\/the-hill-another-state-democracy-report-ignores-plummeting-trust\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hill: Another State of Democracy Report Ignores Cause of Plummeting Trust"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>The Hill, June 29, 2018\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Another ‘state of democracy’ report ignores real cause of plummeting trust<\/a><\/h1>\n

by James Bovard<\/p>\n

The 937th report on the crisis of democracy in the Trump era was released\u00a0Tuesday<\/span>. Half of Americans polled believe that the U.S. is in \u201creal\u00a0danger of becoming a nondemocratic, authoritarian country\u201d and two-thirds believe democracy is \u201cgetting weaker,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0according to the study.<\/p>\n

This report is a co-production of the George W. Bush Institute, the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Biden Center, and Freedom House, partnering to create the Democracy Project. A quick search reveals that the word \u201ctainted\u201d is nowhere in the report. But the list of authors effectively assures that the report will overlook how the abuses of recent presidencies sabotaged Americans\u2019 faith in their political system.<\/p>\n

The report\u00a0asked Americans to specify their concerns from \u201ca list of some things that some people might say are wrong with our democracy.\u201d Big surprise for a report tied to political poohbahs: \u201cpolitical treachery\u201d is not on the list of 11 problems of democracy. Instead, people could complain about issues like \u201cbig money in politics\u201d or \u201cracism and discrimination.\u201d People did have the option of checking \u201cgovernment getting too big and intrusive\u201d (mentioned by 16 percent of respondents) but the wording suggests that is something which simply happened, like moss growing on the north side of rocks.<\/p>\n

Former President George W. Bush declared<\/a> that he hoped the report and its recommendations \u201ccan be a step toward restoring faith in democracy and democratic institutions.\u201d But rolling out George W. Bush to whoop up democracy is a mistake. Why would anyone trust George Bush\u2019s advice on any subject aside from how to\u00a0get rich from eminent domain abuses connected to professional baseball team stadiums<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Bush relied on false pretenses to drag the nation into war against Iraq, a conflict that left\u00a04,400 Americans<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead<\/a>. As president, Bush\u00a0lied about ordering torture<\/a>\u00a0and then\u00a0boasted about it after leaving office\u00a0in his memoir<\/a>. Bush\u2019s White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez\u00a0argued\u00a0a\u00a0\u201ccommander-in-chief\u201d<\/a> override entitled the president to violate federal law.<\/p>\n

The report quotes former Vice President Joe Biden<\/a><\/span>: \u201cThe United States is unique among nations because we are founded on a set of democratic ideals\u201d and \u201ca commitment to certain basic rights and fundamental freedoms.\u201d Regrettably, that lore was apparently non-binding in the Obama era. The Obama administration approved\u00a0massive illegal surveillance on Americans<\/a>\u00a0and concocted an array of new prerogatives including\u00a0a presidential right to assassinate Americans who<\/a>\u00a0were suspected of terrorist associations.<\/p>\n

Freedom House, the third sponsor of the report, had a glorious history exposing communist oppression during the Cold War. Freedom House calls itself an \u201cindependent watchdog organization<\/a>\u201d but\u00a0the majority of\u00a0its recent funding\u00a0comes from the U.S. government<\/a>. Not surprisingly, it typically champions U.S. interventions abroad purportedly to spread democracy<\/a>. Leftists like\u00a0Noam Chomsky have long criticized<\/a> Freedom\u00a0House, and a recent\u00a0Heritage Foundation report<\/a>\u00a0slammed Freedom House for \u201cpropaganda\u201d and a \u201cconsistent pattern of bias and partisanship.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report tested various pro-democracy messages and found that the one that \u201cgenerated the most favorable feelings about America\u2019s system of democratic government used the phrase \u2018so that the freedoms and rights we cherish don\u2019t get whittled away.\u2019\u201d If this is their ace, then the report should have recommended prohibiting teaching American history.<\/p>\n

Americans\u2019 faith in democracy and politicians has plummeted in large part due to perennial violations of their rights by one federal alphabet agency after another, from the FBI, to the TSA, to the DEA, to the DHS, and to the IRS. Candidate Donald Trump<\/a><\/span> periodically signaled that he would curb federal abuses but, as president, he has instead spurred new crackdowns on\u00a0drug users<\/a>,\u00a0property owners<\/a>, immigrants, trade<\/a>, and other targets.<\/p>\n

The report, like many similar trumpet calls, urges increased civics education in public schools. But civics classes are an illusory solution because government has no incentive to educate people about the perils of political power. Besides, as a 1996 Washington Post survey concluded, \u201cThe more people know, the less confidence they had in government.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

Americans are indeed losing faith in democracy but more cheerleading from the political ruling class will not reverse the trend. As long as presidents are permitted to routinely behave like dictators, citizens would be foolish to trust ballots to provide all the protection their rights and liberties need or deserve.\u00a0 Americans should scoff at any democratic faith-building exercises that omit government under the law and the Constitution.<\/p>\n

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James Bovard is the author of\u00a0“Public Policy Hooligan<\/a>” (Kindle version 2012), “Attention Deficit Democracy<\/a>” (St. Martin’s\/Palgrave, 2006), and eight other books. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors and has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and many other publications.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Hill, June 29, 2018 Another ‘state of democracy’ report ignores real cause of plummeting trust by James Bovard The 937th report on the crisis of democracy in the Trump era was released\u00a0Tuesday. Half of Americans polled believe that the U.S. is in \u201creal\u00a0danger of becoming a nondemocratic, authoritarian country\u201d and two-thirds believe democracy is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12238,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1587,539,1581,1583,1586,52,753,113,45,1584,1582,36,159,38,12,1585],"class_list":["post-12234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alberto-gonzalez","tag-asset-forfeiture","tag-authoritarianism","tag-biden-center","tag-commander-in-chief-override","tag-democracy","tag-donald-trump","tag-drug-war","tag-freedom","tag-freedom-house","tag-george-w-bush-institute","tag-iraq","tag-liberty","tag-obama","tag-torture","tag-treachery"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Hill: Another State of Democracy Report Ignores Cause of Plummeting Trust - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/29\/the-hill-another-state-democracy-report-ignores-plummeting-trust\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Hill: Another State of Democracy Report Ignores Cause of Plummeting Trust - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Hill, June 29, 2018 Another ‘state of democracy’ report ignores real cause of plummeting trust by James Bovard The 937th report on the crisis of democracy in the Trump era was released\u00a0Tuesday. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12234"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12240,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12234\/revisions\/12240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}