OPINION: Americans, we are on the brink of losing our democracy

Our government “of the people, for the people, by the people” is endangered. This time, the danger is not a military war, as it was when Abraham Lincoln spoke those famous words. Instead, it is a war of opposing political parties within our own U.S. Congress. The peril to our democracy is as great.

At one time members of Congress felt it was the duty of political parties to work together. The thinking was that both parties had a responsibility to the public as a whole, though Republicans were more the businessperson’s party and Democrats spoke for ordinary working people. Telling the truth and give-and-take for the greater good were expected norms of behavior.

Last month, President Joe Biden emphasized this bipartisan approach in his speech honoring the legacy of Arizona’s Republican Sen. John McCain. Biden said that he and McCain had “hammer-and-tong” debates in the Senate. Then they’d go have lunch together.

Not long before his death, McCain had written, “Will we not hide from history, but make history? Will we put partisanship aside and put country first?”

Most of us have lived our lives in the freedom of American democracy. It has never occurred to us that a democracy as enduring as ours could be weakened and die. But history has shown otherwise.

A best-selling book, “How Democracies Die,” by Steven Livitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, presents examples of conditions that have allowed other democratic countries to succumb to dictators. Early in this history, the loss of democratic government was characterized by rapid governmental takeover, the most notorious being Adolf Hitler’s seizure of Germany. More recently, the gradual erosion of democratic practices and safeguards is making nations around the world vulnerable to would-be dictators.

When democracy disappears slowly, people become tolerant of practices that would have shocked them in earlier times — lying to the public, for example. But the most significant factor weakening democracy is the buildup of rigid hatred between political parties and allegiances. To quote from “How Democracies Die”: “When democracy has worked, it has relied upon two norms that we often take for granted — mutual tolerance and institutional forbearance. Treating rivals as legitimate contenders for power and under-utilizing one’s institutional prerogatives in the spirit of fair play are not written into the American Constitution. Yet, without them, our constitutional checks and balances will not operate as we expect them to.”

In the past week, Congress has been a theater of dysfunction. Up against a government shutdown, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House, filed a motion to extend. But this was followed by a blast from Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, a Donald Trump loyalist, who forced a vote to overthrow the speaker “for working with the Democrats.” The motion passed, and on Oct. 3, McCarthy was escorted from the floor of the House of Representatives.

Most of us have pledged “allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Many organizations — Rotary Clubs, for example — open meetings with the pledge.

Somehow, all Americans, especially their representatives in the nation’s House and Senate, need to remember the principles on which our country was founded.

The greatest Republican of them all urged people to act “with malice towards none, with charity towards all,” finding “the better angels of our nature.”

Janet McCabe and her husband David came to Alaska in 1964. She is a graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a member of Alaska Common Ground and Commonwealth North.

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