Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud
Senator Mike Lee helps us understand what he means by "a republic, not a democracy."
So, long-time readers know of my interest in the rhetorical assertion that the US is “a republic, not a democracy.” Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) is a major proponent of this phrase (see here, for example). Given Lee’s increasingly obsequious obeisance to Trump, it is clear that he does not respect the ideals of representative democracy.
A tweet from this week makes the point.
The caption reads” A law enforcement officer points a crowd control weapon at a protester in Chicago on Tuesday.”
So, Mike Lee’s version of a “republic” includes using the power of the state to repress those who dare to protest the administration in power. I would note that the man being harassed has brown skin, which I guess justifies the weapon in his face all the more.
I would note that I do not know exactly what is happening in that photo apart from the caption, and neither does Mike Lee. But the fact that he thinks that such an image looks like a “constitutional republic” is him saying the quiet part out loud: he is all in on the authoritarian deployment of power if it is done for his political side. Were I to pick an image to represent my ideals related to democracy, it would not have anything to do with a weapon pointed at someone’s face.
The source of the image is likely this Chicago Sun-Times piece, Feds ram SUV after chase down residential street in Chicago, then tear-gas crowd, the contents of which do not cover federal law enforcement with glory. I will note that the piece does not provide any specific information about the image.
I have flirted with a larger project on the subject of the phrase “a republic, not a democracy”, which included a round of research in digital archives of US newspapers going back to the 1790s through to the present. I have yet to find anyone who claims that we are a republic, and not a democracy, who does so in a way that would expand rights or create public benefits (unless they are simply making a distinction between direct and representative democracy).
I have seen usages of the phrase to defend states’ rights on the slavery question. It was used to defend segregation. I have seen it used as part of various Red Scares. It was an especially popular phrase to criticize the New Deal. It is a frequent line of defense of the minority-enhancing aspects of the Electoral College. It is constantly used to describe majority rule as mob rule, and therefore, anything popular enough to get majority support is suspect (i.e., don’t tax the wealthy).
There are examples of perhaps amusing concerns, like decrying federal seat-belt mandates. But those are rare. The main targets are anyone who wants to use the power of the federal government in a way that expands the rights of the oppressed to the detriment of those who benefit from that oppression or policies that have redistributionist elements. It is not a phrase that is used by a variety of actors for different purposes. My research to date suggests it is a phrase used by those who want to restrict the power of citizens and limit rights.
Lee’s usage above is therefore representative, even if it is more stark than many examples I could cite.
To put it more directly: every example I have found of someone who wants to describe the US solely as a “republic” and not a “democracy” is doing so to defend some version of minority rule (or as a means of defending an unjust status quo, such as segregation, which benefited a specific majority population). I am not saying it has never been used to defend rights or to decry minority rule in the history of the US, but if it has, I haven’t found it yet, and I have been looking (if anyone has such an example, please share!). The only usage that I can find of people who don’t use the phrase to assert the dominance of the minority are those who go on to point out that we don’t have a direct democracy (where everypone votes and everything is governed by the majority of the population), but instead have representative democracy (wherein we elect people to govern on our behalf).
I read somewhere there’s one such example, but it’s stashed away in some super secret government warehouse next to the Ark of the Covenant.
For all we know that kid could have been ready to throw a plastic bottle at an SUV. There are Hamas-like cells of terrorists out there with stashes of weaponized plastic bottles ready to do coordinated attacks on SUVs and mall cops in body armor. They’re going to dent a bumper, or smudge a windshield. The mall cop might get a bit wet. Anything is possible. Damage will be upwards of 45 dollars. The mall cop will lose his temper for the 45th time that day.
This is serious stuff and we live in a constitutional republic. Laws are the only antidote against the violence of bottle throwing. If you don’t like it, don’t be anywhere near a place where a Hamas-led bottle attack might be launched. Also, sometimes these terrorists call people names and use bad language.
Lee refers to a “constitutional republic,” and promptly forgets the constitutional part – i.e., the first amendment rights for the rabble to speak freely and assemble peaceably without having a masked asshole, under the color of law, pointing a gun in their face. Lee, who was once thought to be one of the smarter members of the Senate, now has the original iteration of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Shouldn’t that be @DebasedMikeLee?
Mike Lee is such a sad case, trying so pathetically hard to be edgy and fully embracing the juvenile obnoxiousness of the incel and groyper (groypies?) community.
Not a pretty picture of a grown-ass man
Reading the details at the linked article I think we should keep several things in mind. First ICE has more than doubled its number of agents and they only get 8 weeks of training. Most of them are going through this kind of stuff the first time which means many dont know what to do and many will overreact. So when I sometimes read that the police, who have much more training and experience, dont respond the way ICE wants I am inclined to believe that the police are better at assessing the situation and responding appropriately. (Note that army bootcamp is 10 weeks and the norm is that you have further training before you would ever deploy. Average training time in US for police is 21 weeks.)
Next, the article notes that ICE took a 15 y/o protestor and locked him up with no contact with family for 5 hours and then just let him go. We should all be aware that this happening pretty often. Protestors, bystanders, journalists are being abused, beaten and locked up for no apparent reason other than ICE agents were mad at them. We have videos of ICE agents losing their temper and pepper spraying people who were just talking. Doesnt it seem odd that there is no real evidence that the car with immigrants rammed an ICE vehicle. Finally, if you watched the video you know that the majority of police in the country dont engage in hitting a car they are chasing in city streets because it has harmed too many people. Yet a couple of yahoos who probably grew up watching Dukes of Hazard thought it was worth risking the lives of innocents so they could catch a couple of people who crossed into our country illegally and had committed no other crimes.
Steve
Some years back I saw Sen. Lee on one of the Sunday morning shows. He had a list of five bullet points of features that “must” be removed from the states’ voting systems. It was amusing that the Republican legislature in Utah had, over the previous couple of years, added four of the five to Utah’s system.
I expect Trump and the Supreme Court to make a run at banning the western states’ mail ballot systems before the 2028 elections. It could get really ugly.
Lee just desperately wants to be as cool as the young Republicans whose chats we recently saw.
@Charley in Cleveland: Of the things that I would argue are true about Lee and his ilk: they really don’t care about the Constitution, unless it can be used to their advantage.
Since Kathy brought up a Star Trek TOS episode, I’ll mention another, The Omega Glory, which has parallel history Yang rebels defeating their Chinese looking Kohm conquerors, while reciting gibberish versions of the Pledge of Allegiance and the Preamble of the Constitution. “Worship words”, vaguely remembered without understanding.
Steven, that sounds like such a fun project. I would love to see bite sized quotables, with a couple sentences of setup and then the response “a republic not a democracy” with name attached.
So much fun. I think we need to drag that phrase through the dirt. Make people embarrassed to use it. Prime reporters to make comparisons.
@gVOR10:
It’s been my contention all along the wingnuts revere the symbols while pissing on the principles those symbols represent.
Mike Lee, like virtually the entire Republican congressional delegation, has temporarily suspended whatever fealty to The Constitution they had while Trump deconstructs the federal government and wages war on half of America. After all, they’ve got to consolidate Republican gains before they get back to that Constitution stuff.
Lee and his ilk love Trump because DJT has created the permission structure for them to say the quiet parts out loud. The GOP has hated democracy (which requires moderation to find common ground) since at least Gingrich. Trump’s success in shattering norms saves the rest of them from the dog whistling cover-up of what they truly want.
Ah, freebased Mike Lee.
Next up,” an autocracy, not a republic.”
Seriously, the whole point about “a constitutional republic” (or constitutional monarchy, for that matter) as againt “pure democracy” was supposed to be about respect for laws, procedures, precedents. Insofar as a vote of the a mojority could not overturn waht were valorised as basic rights and liberties.
Whereas MAGA is all abot the supremacy of the “democatic” leader.
And to hell with law, precedent. and conventions.
And people like Senator Lee cannot perceive they are standing the whole concept on it’s head.
Stupidity, or cynicism?
@JohnSF: I think it’s sort of a manic thing, where you just keep going through the next door because you’re chasing things, and you don’t every quite stop to consider things, to be mindful, to look at the bigger picture. You’re so driven by emotion that you just keep chasing that car.
@Jay L. Gischer:
It reminds me of the line from Thomas More in A Man For all Seasons:
That was the lesson English politics learnt in a hard school.
And MAGA seem minded to cast aside.
What is worrying me is that Trump, or perhaps rather Stephen Miller, seem to sidling towards the following dialectic:
– extra-legal military force is deployable at will of the executive
– against any the executive determine to be criminals and “terrorists”, as per Venezuela
– the executive can deploy the military to uphold “order” domestically
– the domestic opponents of MAGA Republicanism are “antifa terrorists”
– therefore the executive can use “emergency powers” and military force against them
And assume they will stand upright in the winds that would blow.
The examples of other countries are, that in such circumstances, the men in direct command of the military eventually realise that THEY have the real power.
Against which neither property nor popular acclaim can stand.
See eg Napoleon Bonaparte, Julius Caesar, Latin American and African generals various, etc etc.
England was fortunate that Cromwell was inclined to limit his ambitions.
@Jay L. Gischer:
Manic states end. This isn’t a state; it’s a worldview.
Or cynicism.
@Stephen Taylor
We/they seem to be running out of “quiet parts” for them to say out loud.
Also:
Yep. That’s been my take for the 30 years I’ve found myself in that very argument. And by repeating the narrative of “republic not democracy!”, the idea will take hold among younger generations as the corporate memory of our “Camalot” fades of into the sunset. These “republic not democracy!” folk are flim-flam artists, just like President Conman. And they are smooth-talking us out of our DEMOCRACY, for which I know my family paid its dues and admission long ago.