- GOP Sen.
Mike Lee took to Twitter this week to argue that the US is "not ademocracy ," sparking fierce backlash. - Lee's statements, which mischaracterized the nature of the US political system, struck a nerve at a time when President
Donald Trump is fueling divisions in the US and undermining the legitimacy of the election. - "
Authoritarianism in a nutshell," one historian and expert on democracy said in response to Lee's tweets.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee courted controversy this week when he tweeted that "rank democracy" is a threat to American prosperity.
"We're not a democracy," Lee said. "Democracy isn't the objective; liberty, peace, and prosperity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that."
"The word 'democracy' appears nowhere in the Constitution, perhaps because our form of government is not a democracy. It's a constitutional republic," Lee added. "To me it matters. It should matter to anyone who worries about the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of the few."
The Utah Republican's tweets on the matter are linked to a long history of Republicans rejecting the notion that the US political system is a democracy. The GOP's objection to calling the US a democracy is tied to the fact Republicans have reason to fear a system in which a majority of Americans have more say. The Republican party's platform is increasingly at odds with the perspectives of most voters on an array of issues.
But Lee's portrayal of democracy as something that can hinder progress in the US could also be viewed in a more chilling light given the Republican senator is an ally of a president who has rapidly eroded democratic norms during his tenure and is actively working to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
President Donald Trump has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, for example, and has essentially called for his political rivals to be jailed. The president has baselessly claimed that the election is "rigged" against him as he trails former Vice President Joe Biden in the polls. Trump's behavior has mirrored that of authoritarians, and alarmed historians and scholars of democracy.
Lee's tweets on democracy, which began on Wednesday and carried into Thursday, struck a nerve with many people at a time when experts have warned that American democracy is in mortal danger.
Walter Shaub, former director of the US office of government ethics, said: "People of my grandfather's generation knew what to do about fascists. Now a member of Congress is urging us to join them. I wonder what made you hate America so much."
"Every despot in the world has promised liberty, peace, and prosperity," Brian Klaas, Brian Klaas, a political scientist at the University College London, said via Twitter in response to Lee. "The problem is that without democracy, you can't get rid of them when they don't actually deliver. And then you're stuck with a dictator who provides none of the above."
The Utah senator, who was democratically elected to the Senate in 2011, was echoing an oft-repeated line from US conservatives that "the US is a republic, not a democracy."
This is a misleading slogan. The US is not a direct democracy, in which citizens play a direct role in voting on policy or laws, but it is a representative democracy, in which representatives are elected by citizens to be their voice in government. It is also a constitutional democracy, in which the Constitution provides for a system of checks and balances (co-equal branches of government) and therefore presents restraints on the majority.
Technically, the US is a constitutional republic. But a republic is, by definition, a type of democracy.
"Both democracy and republic have more than a single meaning, and one of the definitions we provide for democracy closely resembles the definition of republic," according to Merriam-Webster, which defines a republic as "a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections."
In other words, the US is both a republic AND a democracy.
Lee painted a false dichotomy and he could not have done it at a worse moment, as many in the US feel that the GOP has already instituted minority rule and democracy watchdogs warn that America is becoming increasingly autocratic under Trump.
"Authoritarianism in a nutshell," Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian and expert on authoritarianism at New York University, said in response to Lee. "Same words said from Mussolini to Orbán. GOP has judged the time right to come out and say it."
"The escalation of GOP and WH rhetoric about protestors being a mob and Dems being 'too dangerous to rule' is very serious," Ben-Ghiat said, warning that such talk "often precedes" authoritarian government actions.
Like many congressional Republicans, Lee went from being a fierce critic of Trump during the 2016 campaign season to an ally after the former reality TV star won the election. Back in 2016, Lee questioned whether Trump would be an authoritarian if elected.
"I would like some assurances that he is going to be a vigorous defender of the U.S. Constitution, that he is not going to be an autocrat, that he is not going to be an authoritarian," Lee said at the time. "That is not an unreasonable demand."
Fast-forward to 2020 and Lee is at the forefront of GOP efforts to confirm Trump's Supreme Court nominee prior to the election, despite the fact polling has shown a majority of Americans believe that seat should remain vacant until after Election Day.