How Fragile is Our Democracy?
Garrett Epps
Washington Monthly
Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq, professors at the University of Chicago law school, want to convince readers that the last four years are not the result of Trump’s personality, or even of peculiarly American political woes.
How to Save a Constitutional Democracy by Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq. The University of Chicago Press. 295 pp.
“American exceptionalism” is now a dogma of the right (recall their ceaseless attack on Obama for his supposed apostasy), but, as Ginsburg and Huq explain, the phrase was actually coined by the American Communist Party to explain Marxism’s failure here. Whatever “exceptionalism” means today; no one can argue that the United States is immune to worldwide political and social trends; and, since 2000, those trends have been flowing against democracy and in favor of authoritarianism. The spillover of authoritarian ideas and techniques is a malign effect of globalization: “Innovations in fashion, music, and business spread across borders, and law is no exception,” the authors note.