On America’s birthday, the most patriotic act you can do is defending our democracy

Commentary written by Dr. Elizabeth C. Matto

From parades to fireworks, the celebration of Independence Day is being marked throughout the country in ways our nation historically has celebrated it with more celebrations to come as the nation prepares for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the start of the Revolutionary War.

These celebrations are taking place against the backdrop of growing threats to the health and longevity of what makes America truly revolutionary – its democratic ideals and the Constitutional republic embodying them.

As we head into extended celebrations of our nation’s semiquincentennial, it is worth remembering the ideals upon which our nation was built and recommitting to matching these ideals to our contemporary reality.   

It is worth remembering that the Founders of the United States viewed democracy in its purest form as dangerous – leading to instability and threatening to the rights and liberty of those not in the popular majority.

As a result, they structured government in such a way that individual rights and liberties would be protected both from popular will and the government itself.

As James Madison observed, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

So, it was a representative democracy – one that would filter the passions of the majority – that was constructed in which separation of powers and checks and balances would protect individual rights and liberties. This structure was anchored in the fundamental safeguard – the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights that specified and protected from government encroachment such civil rights and liberties as freedom of speech, the right to assemble, and freedom of the press. 

These were revolutionary ideas that resulted in a revolutionary form of government.

Although its practice has been far from perfect throughout history, the American ethos has been to strive to be “a more perfect union.”

This ethos was captured by Representative Barbara Jordan in her opening comments at the 1974 hearing of the House Judiciary Committee considering the impeachment of Richard Nixon. The first Black woman in the twentieth century elected to Congress from the Deep South, Jordan stated: 

Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States: “We, the people.”

It’s a very eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787, I was not included in that “We, the people.” I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake.

But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in “We, the people.” 

Instead of becoming more perfect, democracies including our own are backsliding– becoming governmental systems that maintain the trappings of democracies while democratic norms and foundations are eroded.

As scholars Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue in their 2018 book “How Democracies Die,” the transformation of democracies into authoritarianism need not be the result of a coup. Instead, countries can maintain the appearance of a democracy while undermining its values and institutions by rejecting the democratic “rules of the game,” delegitimizing political opponents, tolerating or encouraging violence, and curtailing the media and the civil liberties of political opponents.  

Evidence of democratic decline is accumulating at a rapid pace in United States with a list that includes:

• President Trump issuing pardons to those who violently breached the Capitol to overturn the outcome of the 2020 Electoral College vote
• The administration violating the due process rights of migrants by deporting them to another country as determined by the U.S. Supreme Court and then not complying with the Court’s declaration to return those deported
• The elimination of congressionally-funded federal programs and offices with little opposition by the legislative majority
• The manhandling and arrest of elected officials of the opposing party.

The fact that these actions are being taken by a president duly-elected by the majority of the American people does not justify them as an extension of democracy – instead, they are antithetical to the revolutionary ideals and constitutional republic forged nearly 250 years ago.  

Independence Day offers an opportunity to celebrate our nation and all those who have put their lives on the line to defend it – from the Minute Men who resisted the British at Concord’s Old North Bridge in 1775 to those serving in the military today.

It is also a moment to celebrate the vision of those who crafted a system of government that ensured both majority rule and minority rights.

Lastly, it is a moment to highlight when we as a nation have lived up to these democratic ideals and when we have not and then to commit to linking these ideals to the practice of politics today.

What could be more patriotic than to ensure that the revolutionary ideals of 1776 are preserved, protected, and defended by “we the people” this year and in years to come. 

Elizabeth C. Matto, Ph.D., is director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. She is author of  the book “To Keep the Republic: Thinking, Talking, and Acting Like a Democratic Citizen.”