Intolerance and democracy

Back in August of 2009, a time when the Tea Party was making news and a threat of fascism was being discussed, I wrote (using the Tea Party point of view):

Democracy brought us abortion. Democracy, spread among even stranger immigrants, has knocked Christianity from its perch as the *de facto* state religion. Democracy has brought us a crushing national debt. Democracy has allowed women and non-whites to enter the power structure (even a Latina on the Supreme Court!). Democracy has brought us minority rights and hate crime laws. Democracy has brought us gay rights and gay marriage. Democracy bailed out the Wall St. thieves who caused this current recession and let them go without punishment. Democracy is going to take away affordable health care. Democracy wants to take away my guns. Democracy has given us a black president!

Who needs Democracy?

Now there are numbers to back me up.

Noah Berlatsky wrote an article for NBC News Think about a study by political scientists Steven Miller and Nicholas Davis titled “White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy.”

Their study finds a correlation between white American's intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy.

The data comes from a World Values Survey, which conducted polls in many countries over a wide range of beliefs in 1995-2011. That’s well before the nasty guy ran for office, but well within the time the GOP leadership has been preparing for someone like the nasty guy. Berlatsky tells about a sample result from the USA survey:

People who said they did not want to live next door to immigrants or to people of another race were more supportive of the idea of military rule, or of a strongman-type leader who could ignore legislatures and election results.

The paper quotes American white supremacist leader Richard Spencer, and Berlatsky summarizes:

Ethnic cleansing is impossible as long as marginalized people have enough votes to stop it. But this roadblock disappears if you get rid of democracy. Spencer understands that white rule in the current era essentially *requires* totalitarianism. That's the logic of fascism.

We’re “fond of the Framers’ grand vision of liberty and equality for all,” said Miller of what is in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. But the Federalist Papers from the early years of our country show that bit about “for all” had a limited meaning of white men who owned property. I don’t know when the property part fell away, but the men part stayed until 1920 and the white part until 1965.

For a large portion of American history white men didn’t have to share democracy with women and minorities. Now that they do have to share it and now that they face the prospect that in a couple decades whites will be in the minority, democracy doesn’t look so good.

Berlatsky wrote that this isn’t something both parties are doing. A commitment to free health care isn’t a threat to the foundation of democracy. But a growing concentration of intolerant white people in the GOP is.

This intolerance is a sign of ranking. In this case it is people saying because I’m of higher rank I get to have things that you can’t have. A sign of my rank is I have it, you don’t. Another word for it is privilege. Intolerant people work mighty hard to protect that privilege and the ranking it represents.