Two awesome things happened at the George W. Bush Presidential Center last week.
We hosted a remarkable group of North Korean escapees for a workshop on human rights and advocacy. And the George W. Bush Presidential Museum debuted a new artifact in the Freedom Matters special exhibit – an original 1854 syllogism penned by future President Abraham Lincoln framing his arguments against slavery.
Both offer reminders to be grateful for living in a free society and what can happen if we take that privilege for granted. Human nature is such that it’s very easy to slip into a tyrannical mindset. More frightening yet, we may even convince ourselves that tyranny has benefits. We can’t become comfortable with this line of thinking.
Putting Lincoln aside for a moment, it’s important to understand that our North Korean friends have endured hell. They suffered at the hands of a totalitarian regime that denies 26 million people freedom through city-sized political prison camps, public executions for consuming foreign media, and enforced poverty – just to name a few horrific things.
During one session, a participant who now attends an American university lamented how fellow students wonder if a “strongman” leader would be preferable to the messiness of democracy.
That curiosity – that temptation – is shared by more than a few Americans. Thirty-eight percent would support a leader who was willing to break the rules to get the country on the right track, according to the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute’s 2023 American Values Survey. While nearly half of all Republican’s surveyed felt this way, significant numbers of independents (38%) and Democrats (29%) believed the same.
This is a good reminder that authoritarianism’s allure is a human failing, not a partisan one. And we shouldn’t label these folks as “bad people.” They’re frustrated because they don’t see the system delivering for them.
And to be clear, strong or decisive leadership isn’t bad either. The danger is a willingness to cede all responsibility to a leader and invest unchecked power in them to solve our problems. Fix this and don’t bother me with the details.
A liberal democracy with 330 million very different people, though, is hard. It requires work, commitment, and a sense of responsibility. We get overwhelmed with the everyday problems of our own lives and don’t want to deal with all that other stuff.
Let’s bring Lincoln back into the picture to find out why we can’t shirk our civic duty.
Shortly after the North Korean event, I visited the Bush Museum to see the new artifact – a blue-grey paper with Lincoln’s handwritten thoughts. Only ever intended for his eyes, Lincoln used these scraps to jot down ideas as he formulated positions and speeches.
This one lays out the future president’s thinking on slavery, reasoning that:
If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B.-why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A?
You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.
You do not mean color exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.
But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.
My North Korean friend’s comments about “strongman temptation” returned to me. Lincoln was essentially highlighting how easily we slip into that authoritarian mindset and how flawed it is.
We can counter the temptation, though, with the deductive reasoning Lincoln demonstrated.
- You say a strongman would be preferable to liberal democracy or to get the country back on track because they could cut through institutional red tape and get the job done quickly.
- That sounds great about the issues that matter most to us. And of course, we assume the strongman leader will always be aligned with our interests. But what if they’re not? Or what if they’re aligned in one area, but not others? Unfortunately, you’ve given license to the strongman to steam roll you or others to get things done. Given the volatility of human nature, that eventual juxtaposition of interests seems inevitable.
- By the same logic, what happens if somehow your political opponents take power? By the precedents you’ve endorsed, their strongman can break norms to stomp over issues or rights that you hold dear for the sake of efficiency.
- And what if you suddenly find yourself (for whatever cultural, religious, ethnic or racial, political, gender, or other reasons) unacceptable to the strongman for whom you’ve advocated? With safeguards and checks on arbitrary power eroded or eliminated, that can end horrifically. Just ask Europe’s Jewish population from 1933 to 1945, Rwanda’s Tutsis, China’s Uyghurs, Burma’s Rohingya, Afghanistan’s women and girls, and hosts of others throughout history.
Such reasoning helps temper our passions by ensuring we’ve adequately weighed pros and cons.
It’s amazing how liberal democracy – though messy and frustrating – can protect us from such terrible outcomes by enshrining individual rights, limited and accountable government, and the rule of law as pillars of society.
And despite the openness of some Americans to a strongman, the United States isn’t on the brink of authoritarian revolution. Quite the contrary. Americans are a (classically) liberal people, who believe in liberal values and practice them in their daily lives.
It’s easy to take all that for granted, though. Sometimes, it takes the bravery of people who have suffered through tyranny or the wisdom of past leaders to appreciate why we can’t.
