The substance behind the ostensible outcome of the 2020 U.S. election, which Trump lost, is the shocking fact of the democratization of the United States. The United States has always promoted political progress in democratized countries, but the same forms of democratic regression that have occurred in democratized countries are now occurring in the United States, the purported bastion of democracy. People who hold traditional American values have long lost their vigilance against the adherents of Marxism, and instead see the forces that are shaking up American democracy as political competitors who respect it, completely ignoring the political ambitions of such forces in their pursuit of de-democratization.
I. Concerns about the U.S. Democratic System
Issues & Insights, an American online political magazine, published an editorial on January 7, titled “Democrats Can Turn America into a ‘California State’. The authors note that the Democrats’ goal is to secure a permanent majority in order to implement their far-left agenda; in other words, they want to replicate what the Democrats have already accomplished in California. The Democrats want to increase the number of federal Supreme Court justices to make it a rubber stamp for their expansion and constitutional violations; they are also openly talking about how to make Puerto Rico and Washington D.C., which support the Democrats, into two new states of the United States to increase the Democrats’ advantage in the Senate; and the Democrats are sure to pass legislation that will make it easier for them to win elections in the future. Californians are witnessing the ill effects of the Democrats’ relentless control of government after successfully marginalizing Republicans by implementing an endless series of tax increases and environmental regulations.
This editorial notes the problem of one-party dominance, but it doesn’t think further down the road about what a one-party political system means. In an interview with New Tang Dynasty TV on December 27 last year and an interview with Taiwan‘s Political and Economic Forefront on January 8 this year, I made the observation that this election fraud did not just lead to Trump’s defeat, but also meant that the United States might bid farewell to democracy and enter the dictatorship of the “politically correct” faction.
In “The Third Wave of Democratization,” Harvard professor Samuel Huntington says that the American political science community, in accordance with Schumpeter’s traditional concept, generally considers a country’s political system to be a democracy in the twentieth century based on the criterion that the vast majority of strong collective decision makers are elected fairly, honestly and regularly. He also cites two definitions of democratic elections, namely competition and public participation, from Robert Dahl, a former member of the political science community.
The most critical aspect of whether a national election for a national leader satisfies the elements of a democratic election is that there be no electoral fraud on a scale large enough to change the outcome of the election. Electoral fraud is in fact the malicious manipulation of election results, which on the one hand undermines the normal competition of candidates and on the other hand deprives citizens of their right to free elections. Electoral fraud produces election results that are, of course, dishonest and unjust. Thinking with this classic measure of the foundation of democracy, we have reason to worry whether the American democratic system has been shaken.
Second, the barrier of democracy is quietly collapsing
A great deal of detail has come to light about last year’s election fraud. In addition to the tens of thousands of sworn testimonies in fraud cases filed in swing states, which have provided a wealth of evidence, several statisticians have pointed out anomalies in vote counting results such as the Biden curve, and several reports of election fraud released by White House trade adviser Navarro have clearly illustrated election fraud. on January 7, Ron Johnson, chairman of the federal Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, issued a statement saying Americans have seen the Communist virus epidemic ‘used’ to expand mail-in ballots; on Election Day, they have seen poll watchers thrown out or blocked from supervising votes; they have heard reports of dead people voting, people voting who have moved out of state or whose registered addresses are unoccupied, and people who have voted twice. Election officials refused to turn over evidence to those investigating the irregularities; courts refused to hear the evidence obtained, instead dismissing election challenges on procedural grounds.
Why did such massive fraud succeed? Why were all the lawsuits about election fraud this time civil lawsuits brought by the people against the government, and no prosecutor brought criminal charges about it? In fact, the real reason behind this is that the barriers of democracy are quietly collapsing, and Trump and his nearly 80 million voters have become the victims.
Democracy is supposed to have a series of institutional barriers to protect the basic political rights of citizens, so that their right to vote is not violated and individuals and political forces opposed by citizens cannot do what they want. Such institutional barriers include: first, the legislature must legislate to protect the security and fairness of general elections; second, when political crimes such as organized electoral fraud occur, regardless of their scale, prosecutors at all levels of the judicial system should break the law and direct law enforcement agencies to investigate and bring criminal charges against suspects (regardless of their rank); third, court judges at all levels must break the law and must be judged, and all suspects must be brought to justice in accordance with the law.
However, the situation this year is that: in terms of legislation, many state legislatures have not fully fulfilled their legislative responsibility to protect the security and fairness of elections, and some states have even passed laws that undermine the security and fairness of elections; in terms of justice, prosecutors at all levels have basically not taken the initiative to act, but have stood by and pretended not to know about the existence of election fraud, while some judges have not violated the law, but have failed to investigate the law and evaded their Judicial duties. These members who form the protective barrier of the democratic system submit to a political force and abdicate their political responsibility to maintain the democratic system.
In addition to these institutional failures of the democratic system at the political level, several other components that are the foundation of a democratic system, namely freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of information in schooling, have long been undermined. Some media outlets have turned into mouthpieces of political parties, refusing to report news unfavorable to their favored parties while doing their utmost to smear their political opponents; major social media companies enforce speech censorship, using warnings and blocking to prohibit citizens from fully expressing their opinions; and most schools in the university and primary and secondary school systems have long since ended the dissemination of free information on campus according to “politically correct” standards, instilling only “politically correct Most of the schools in the university, primary and secondary systems have already terminated the dissemination of free information on campus and only instilled the idea of “political correctness.
Is it a retrogression or democratization of democracy?
The indulgence of election fraud from the federal Supreme Court to the state courts has left a very deep mark on the history of American justice. The U.S. has adopted case law in judicial determination, and the attitude of courts at all levels toward election fraud will become the basis for judicial determination of election fraud in the future according to established practice. If this continues, in future elections, if the “politically correct” faction fails to achieve its stated electoral goals, election fraud may once again make an appearance, while the possibility of stopping election fraud through judicial means is ruled out by the judiciary itself. This would produce a long-term unification of the three powers of the “politically correct faction,” and with the control of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and schooling, such a political system would only have the form of a democratic system, but would be close to a one-party dictatorship in essence.
I studied social, political, and economic transitions in communist countries at Princeton University, and I am very familiar with the topic of democratization and democratic regression. Where countries in the process of democratization experience a shaking up of the democratic system, it is usually considered Democratic backsliding (Democracy). The term applies to former communist countries or non-communist regimes on the road to democratization because these countries were previously authoritarian or authoritative systems, and a shaken democracy will most often lead to a resurgence of the authoritarian system, so it is a democratic backsliding. The United States has had a solid democratic system since its founding, and it has remained unchanged for centuries, but the shaking of its democratic system today is actually a phenomenon of de-democratization.
Nancy Bermeo, a political scientist at Princeton University, has argued that since the end of the Cold War, blatant forms of democratic retrogression, such as coups d’état and electoral fraud, have declined, while more subtle and “distasteful” forms of retrogression have increased; these democratic retrogressions are often reflected in the decay of democratic institutions, while the institutions that one would expect to protect democratic values have legitimized Democratic retrogression has been legitimized. It never occurred to Bermeo that once leftist values became more and more influential in American society, electoral fraud and all the “subtle and ‘annoying’ forms of democratic retrogression were not the preserve of democratized countries, but also occurred, and indeed have occurred, in the United States, the supposed bastion of democracy. The possibility of a process of de-democratization within the bastions of democracy has been completely ignored by the entire American political science. For the world’s democracies, the democratization is an alarming situation, and the safety of their respective democracies is at stake.
IV. The Trouble with the ‘Teacher of Democracy’
Since the last century, the United States has become accustomed to playing the role of “teacher of democracy” in the international community. The political science departments of American universities offer two courses: “American Politics” on the evolution and principles of American democracy, and “Comparative Politics” on the political history of democratized countries and the regularities of their phenomena. Generations of American students have thus become accustomed to analyzing and comparing the various paths of democratized countries and the ills of democratic regression in terms of the superiority of the American democratic system; and the American discourse of promoting political progress in democratized countries has always taught people in these countries to deeply understand the paradigm of the American democratic system.
In the future, “teachers of democracy” will inevitably face internal troubles. They will continue to teach people in democratized countries how to improve their democratic systems and to avoid democratic retrogression; however, their ‘students’ may be confused and ask the question: “Teachers, isn’t the democratic retrogression you are talking about the current situation in the United States? Do we still have to learn from the American ‘progressivism’ path? Isn’t democratic retrogression the goal of democratization according to the current practice of the United States?
The common ways of democratic retrogression taught by American ‘teachers of democracy’ are as follows: first, democratically elected leaders use incremental strategies to slowly dismantle the democratic system at an almost invisible pace, producing a government that is no longer democratic, using seemingly legitimate anti-democratic legal mechanisms to hide anti-democratic practices under the cover of the law; second, strategic harassment and manipulation during elections to keep the media from reporting on political opponents and even falsely accusing political opponents; three, illegal interference in the electoral process, either by increasing the share of votes for winning candidates, depressing the share of votes for rival candidates, or both; four, weakened rights to freedom of speech, press, and association, leaving the political opposition powerless to challenge the government, hold it accountable, or replace it; five, undermining the independence of the judiciary; six, cracking down on the political opposition and Fostering a “party of flowers”.
In fact, the phenomena that have occurred in U.S. society over the past years, as well as those that have occurred since the U.S. election last year, are extremely similar to the democratic regressions that the U.S. has always criticized in democratized countries. The only difference is that in democratized countries, these phenomena are democratic regressions, while in the United States, this phenomenon of de-democratization would be called “democratic progress” by the “politically correct”. Perhaps, in the future, the curricula of political science departments in American universities will have to be drastically revised, and the Comparative Politics class will still talk about democratic retrogression, while the American Politics class will have to explain the de-democratization as the result of “progressivism”.
This section is not “dropping the ball”, but using the words of the “democracy teachers” themselves to slap the “political correctness school” in the face.
- Marxism is the mortal enemy of democracy
Currently, some Chinese are very disappointed with the current phenomenon of de-democratization in the U.S. because they are very familiar with the practices of the communist regime. Therefore, when a similar phenomenon is created by the “politically correct school,” the beacon of American democracy in the hearts of these Chinese is extinguished. But at the same time, there are other Chinese who feel that because the CCP is criticizing American democracy and Trump, they cannot pander to the CCP and criticize America. In fact, the focus of the problem is not the CCP, and the CCP’s position is not a criterion for judging the political evolution of the United States. The CCP is always criticizing the U.S. Everything that happens in the U.S. is always flawed in the eyes of the CCP and in the mouths of its foreign media.
Democracy is the political system that most countries around the world agree with and defend, which is why the leaders of many countries, such as Europe and Australia, have taken the opportunity of blocking Trump’s account on Twitter to publicly accuse the American Internet giant. Such accusation is not just a matter of fact, behind it lies an implied dissatisfaction with the democratization of the American “politically correct” faction. The glory of global democracy will not be overshadowed by the extinguishing of the U.S. “lighthouse,” and the democratization of the U.S. will only cause democratic countries to be highly alert to subversive forces from within.
It is worth pondering why the democratization is taking place in the United States and not in other democracies in Europe and America. When similar phenomena occur in countries with regressive democracies, many people in the West believe that social injustice and economic hardship are the main causes. In the U.S., however, such problems are actually excuses or means to instigate democratization, rather than the real motive for democratization.
In fact, the political and intellectual elites who are leading the democratization have one thing in common: they all prefer old and new Marxist values, an important background to which I devoted my article “Restoring the True Face of ‘Political Correctness'” published in The Epoch Times on August 10 last year. In order to achieve their ambition to unify the world and do whatever they want, some Marxist believers see democracy as a stumbling block and a binding rope for their political ambitions, and they are systematically and progressively destroying the core of democracy – free elections – as well as eroding the judicial, legislative, and law enforcement barriers of democracy.
From this perspective, people who hold traditional American values have long lost their vigilance against the adherents of Marxism, and instead see those forces that shake up American democracy as political competitors who respect it, completely ignoring the political ambitions of such forces in their pursuit of democratization. It is also clear that since last year’s election, Trump does not really understand what he is defending; and although his voters have expressed their dissatisfaction with democratization in their support for Trump, most of them still do not understand that what they want to support is actually to defend the American democratic system and to stop it from being hollowed out. The problem exposed before and after the election fraud in the United States is not just the corruption of the people, but the political forces that are trying to turn the United States into a one-party dictatorship; what the “politically correct” hope to achieve through the one-party dictatorship will be the political, social, and economic goals of Marxism, that is, the elimination of true democracy, and the elimination of capitalism.
Marxism is the mortal enemy of democracy, and through the perception and planning of the “politically correct” faction, it has been transformed into a series of actions that shake the foundation of the American democratic system, and this is the greatest lesson of the current inversion of the American political system.
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