This is how liberty ends
Americans are on the verge of forfeiting their constitutional democracy.
Have you ever heard about dictators seizing power and assumed America is different — that we’re a free country and it can’t happen here? It’s happening. Americans are on the brink of losing their constitutional democracy.
Sometimes principled people must speak up and do whatever they can to protect freedom. This is such a time.
Every living American inherited the great gift of liberal democracy from our predecessors.1 Because most of us haven’t had to fight existential battles for freedom, it’s easy to take for granted how special and historically unique it is to live in a free society governed by the rule of law, with avenues for protecting individual rights and holding elected officials accountable.
Freedom allows us to build families, communities, and businesses with confidence that the government will not arbitrarily destroy them. It allows us to go about our daily lives without fear that an all-powerful state is monitoring us, deputizing our neighbors as spies, or threatening to whisk us off the streets into labor camps or underground prisons to be forgotten.
Americans are on the verge of forfeiting the gift of liberty.
Donald Trump and the Republican Party he leads have America on a fast track toward fascism. He is trampling the Constitution and inventing implausible legal rationales to violate rights as he pleases. He has begun an assault on universities and dissenters while purging the federal government and military of officials who might resist his power grabs. He is abusing the power of the presidency — power that belongs to the American people, not to whoever holds the office — to carry out personal vendettas against private citizens, such as lawyers who have represented parties opposed to him.
The biggest red line is crossed when Trump ignores explicit federal court orders. The more often he’s allowed to get away with that, the more permanent the damage will be to our democracy. The same goes for his efforts to intimidate judges, as Chief Justice John Roberts (a conservative) just rebuked him for doing.
Our entire constitutional system depends on government officials obeying judicial orders. If the government ignores them, it can do whatever it wants, and citizens have no recourse against abuses of power. America’s constitutional democracy and the rule of law rest on this foundation. It is the federal judiciary’s job to say what the law is, and when officials ignore court orders, they are not only breaking the law but destroying the foundation of our freedom.
This week, Trump violated several federal court orders by continuing to deport people illegally — without due process — even after a federal judge ordered him to stop immediately and turn around any planes already in the air.
There is nothing conservative or liberal about officials breaking the law and working to unravel our democracy. It’s time for everyone, regardless of political persuasion, to speak up and resist however they can. Here are some ideas:
Post about politics on your social networks and engage with thoughtful posts by others. Share your views publicly to give others the courage to speak up.
Join and donate to pro-democracy organizations like the ACLU, Protect Democracy, Common Cause, CREW, and Democracy Docket. Also support other good causes promoting long-term political change and helping people in need.2
Call and write to politicians at every level — especially congressional Republicans, who could stop Trump at any time but are instead actively helping him destroy democracy.
Combat disinformation by verifying facts and challenging falsehoods online. Read and share information from credible media sources that follow traditional sourcing and fact-checking practices — sources like the New York Times, NPR, BBC, The Economist, Reuters, and the Associated Press.3 Whenever you’re in a public place like a diner or airport and you see televisions running Fox News or other propaganda, ask that it be changed.
Attend protests, marches, and town halls.
Work on voter registration drives.
Ryan McCarl is a partner of the business litigation firm Rushing McCarl LLP and author of Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024). For tips about legal writing and argumentation, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing blog and follow Ryan on LinkedIn. McCarl’s book is available on Amazon and Audible.
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“Liberal democracy” refers to a democratic form of government that protects individual rights even if the majority wishes to violate them. It doesn’t have anything to do with the labels “liberal” and “conservative.” Most Americans across the political spectrum, including conservatives, have historically shared a commitment to the framework of liberal democracy.
Also consider supporting issue-specific organizations like Lambda Legal and Human Rights Campaign (LGBTQ+ rights); Center for Reproductive Rights and Planned Parenthood (reproductive freedom); Human Rights Watch, Oxfam, Doctors without Borders, and Amnesty International (global antipoverty and human rights); National Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club (environmental protection); and FIRE, Americans for the Arts, and PEN America (arts, culture, and freedom of expression).
Other generally credible sources of information about current events include the Wall Street Journal (news pages only), Los Angeles Times, CNN, Financial Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, ProPublica, the Pew Research Center, FactCheck.org, long-established regional newspapers like the Detroit Free Press and Boston Globe, and the national programming (not local stations) of ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News. A good source can have some bias so long as it follows traditional journalism practices like rigorous sourcing and fact-checking.