Word Attack: “democracy”
Entitled activists have distorted this word beyond recognition.
Like most American kids his age, my son is currently obsessed with the Dog Man book series. We recently laughed our way through Dog Man: Fetch-22 together, and had a really rich conversation afterward about one of the story’s villains, the Fair Fairy. For context: the Fair Fairy is a kids’ TV show host who’s supposed to help kids settle disputes that one kid considers unfair. However, her irritable demeanor causes her to flip out on the kids on air and alienate her co-workers backstage, ultimately resulting in her boss firing her. Despite this being the right and proper response to someone who is failing in all aspects of her job, she howls about how “It’s so UNFAIR!” and sets out to exact revenge on her former employer and the rest of the town.
I was relieved that my son clocked her problem right away: Just because you don’t like a situation, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the situation is unfair. It was a timely lesson for a kid growing up in the DC Metro Area, where a lot of activists are currently howling about how unfair— and more specifically, how undemocratic — it is that they’re experiencing the consequences of their own failings.
Democracy is commonly defined as “a form of government that empowers the people to exercise political control, limits the power of the head of state, provides for the separation of powers between governmental entities, and ensures the protection of natural rights and civil liberties.” The U.S. Constitution outlines the specific ways democratic processes are supposed to work in our republic of, by, and for the people of the United States.
But many of the people crowing the loudest about “democracy” right now aren’t actually advocating for democracy as defined by that document or any other. (Honestly, they lost all credibility to complain about unconstitutional or undemocratic anything when they looked the other way as a shifting collection of unelected family members and political insiders ruled in President Biden’s stead for much of his term. And that’s to say nothing of their silence surrounding Biden’s longstanding corruption, his administration’s selective prosecution of certain kinds of protesters, or their tolerance of Vice President Harris’ abuses of power in California once she was installed as a presidential nominee.) Instead, they’re pushing to ignore the voters’ will in defense of an extra-Constitutional political dynamic that gives unelected bureaucrats and activists like themselves outsized power.
A limited Cabinet and executive staff are necessary for the President to carry out his duties, but the Framers of our Constitution never provided for the creation of an entrenched, ever-growing, unelected bureaucracy— much less one entangled with an opportunistic political class enriching themselves at others’ expense. Special interest groups (ex. industry lobbyists, corporate front groups, professional organizations, and advocacy organizations like the ones demonstrating alongside high-ranking Democrats in recent days) are some of the biggest beneficiaries of this undemocratic status quo. In addition to occasionally receiving funding directly from the government, many use their insider relationships and understanding of arcane regulatory procedures to influence the regulations federal agencies use to interpret and implement laws passed by Congress, giving them a largely invisible means of affecting public policy with no democratic input, accountability, or oversight.
This kind of administrative lobbying isn’t regulated nearly as extensively as it is on the legislative side, where most organizations are legally required to disclose and limit the kind and amount of lobbying they do. Yet the aforementioned regulations directly affect how federal laws are enforced in our daily lives, giving the bureaucrats and activists who shape them significant power over our workplaces, our businesses, our educational opportunities, and our health and safety. Now that decades of bureaucratic mission creep onto the Constitutional turf of actually-enumerated branches of government has come under much-needed scrutiny (last summer at SCOTUS, and now at the White House), unelected activists who stand to lose their privileged access to misappropriated governing power have been melting down. But unless they can point to the specific Constitutional provision that anointed them the only legitimate participants in our democracy, they need to humbly re-examine that word — and their actions.
On the rare occasions that they acknowledge their status as special interest groups, progressive advocacy organizations (like the groups currently complaining about the state of “democracy”) try to differentiate themselves from the others by purporting to represent “the people.” But their disproportionately affluent (read: privileged!) ideological cohort comprises just six percent of Americans. Now, when was the last time you saw any of these groups reconsider their political stances or their advocacy upon realizing that they’re completely unrepresentative of most Americans’ views or interests?
Exactly.
Though they often like to tell themselves otherwise, these advocacy groups typically represent their own class interests and ideological preferences when lobbying the federal government, not the democratically-determined interests of everyday citizens. (Be for real: it was not ordinary working people lobbying USED to subvert Title IX, for example, or pushing the government writ large to enact neoracist policies under the guise of “DEI.”) Once they succeed, they use those wins to secure additional donations from their largely affluent supporters and major funders— corporations and wealthy foundations who use these groups to further inject their influence into future regulatory processes. Groups like these (and individuals connected with them) may also hire themselves out to provide training or technical assistance for businesses or other institutions trying to figure out how to comply with the new regulations they influenced. In these and other ways, these groups flex their ability to affect policy outside of democratic legislative processes in order to make money and continue advancing their class interests via public policy.
The irony of Democrats’ current freak out about President Trump is that their fears about him underscore the exact point about Big Government they’ve denied for decades: Big Government is a threat to liberty. We are actually lucky that thus far, most of Trump’s moves have been attempts to rein in progressives’ recent excesses and failures (particularly regarding outrageous public spending, gender ideology, and illegal immigration) and limit the size and scope of the federal government rather than expanding it. By pushing to maintain the status quo, they are actually working to preserve an ever-more-swollen and powerful bureaucracy, which could easily be weaponized by a more committed and competent autocrat than President Trump could ever dream of being.
There are certainly valid questions and concerns about how President Trump should go about reining in a federal bureaucracy that has operated beyond our Constitutional design for decades. And I definitely feel for honorable federal workers who have spent their careers trying to do their jobs in the public interest despite industry corruption and ideological capture within their agencies. Given our dire fiscal situation, our public conversation right now should be about how to restore Constitutional governance and return money and power to citizens, communities, and states, while being mindful of federal workers and local economies that have become (rightly or wrongly) dependent on our federal government.
What we shouldn’t do is give credence to the (self-)deceptive claims of activist ideologues who are looking out for their own power and class interests under the guise of “protecting democracy.”