During his press conference the other day, President Biden spoke candidly about his substantive conversations with Xi Jinping. He told us that Xi is a proponent of authoritarianism, and that he feels democracy is failing. And he said that Xi is among many other world leaders such as Putin in Russia, who favor authoritarianism. They feel that democracy is not suitable for today’s world.
Biden made it clear that he is going to show that democracy is better, and that we can out perform those countries because of our democratic foundation.
And he made note that the world is facing this challenge between these two ideologies.
We faced something like this before. While the world was struggling through the Great Depression, countries around the world were turning to dictators and generalissimos to lead them. Those autocrats lead their people into war and destruction.
We were lucky, because President Roosevelt believed he could achieve a recovery through democratic means, though to be honest, those trying times tempted him to consider autocratic authority.
In the end it was our democracy that prevailed, and we thrived because of it. We became the great country we are in that moment, and the world today, with democracy the gold standard where the people are the most content, and where people have the most opportunity.
But do not take this message as a celebration, but instead as a warning. We too face a challenge today between those same dark forces that challenged us eighty years ago. Just as we had the American Bund, a National Socialist Party here in America in the 1930s, we face the ugly face of fascism in our midst today.
And just as then we have mouthpieces that speak the same rhetoric of division, and we have the same attacks on our press. And just like then we have had in our midst our own Il Duce, our own Franco; a would be dictator insisting that he alone could solve our problems.
Our democratic ideals rose to the occasion last year and put that would-be dictator out of power, but we did not put to rest that ideology.
There are still many Americans, who, lured by promises of a return to some imagined greatness of days gone by, are still longing for that champion.
And don’t let those last words suggest that we weren’t great, or that we are not still great, we are, without a doubt. But we can see by honest examination of our history, that the greatness we had before was denied to many of our countrymen. Those that with us held the jobs, and stood on the picket lines; those who bore arms against our enemies and voted in elections. Those who played on the parks and sat in the churches were not given the same rights and opportunities as those of us whose ancestry were of European descent – those of us whose ancestors may have held title of property on the ancestors of those others. Those others too were Americans. And today we can continue our greatness, and even grow to be better. We can again be the model of greatness for the world, but this time we have to include all.
But still there are those who are mislead to think that our division is about culture, as if we don’t have room in this great nation for many cultures. And there are many who fail to see that the party they have held traditional allegiance is no longer the party that supports them. They have been seduced by promises of some mythical greatness their parents knew. They have been frightened by imagined threats against their traditions and their culture. In truth all that is happening is an acknowledgement and acceptance of the traditions and cultures of those others, those who earned that place alongside the rest of us in trenches and foxholes, factories and churches.
Make no mistake. I will not mince words. That party of old is not the party of Lincoln, or Eisenhower, or even of Reagan. That party is the party of Trump. And the goal of Trump is the same as the goal of Putin and Xi and all the other autocrats who have replaced the Mussolinis and the Francos and the Hitlers of our day. Those that oppose democracy and favor authoritarianism have lured many to their side. And they have blinded others to their true nature; those who do not see what they are, and only hear their grandiose proclamations.
Today we have two main ideologies: That which favors democracy and that which favors authoritarianism.That is the whole deal right now.
Those who cling desperately to the Republican Party are supporting turning our country into an autocracy, like Putin’s Russia or Xi’s China. I beg of you to step away. You may think it is going to get you some longed for happy day, but that is a smokescreen, a lie to trap you, like the good people of Germany were trapped by the false promises of the Nazis.
We are great because we are diverse, and because we are democratic. It is the foundation that gives confidence and support to all people.
And like our ancestors did in eight decades ago, please abandon the Republican Party. It can reform around better ideals and come back. But when it lead in the early twentieth century, it was beholden to the wealthy and robber barons, and fought against the working people and their pleas for a better life. Today they are the same as back then, and the same oligarchs rub their greedy hands together and picture you as serfs under their lash. Tax breaks for the billionaire class, and bread crumbs for the working people. And all the while telling you that other working people were coming to steal your bred crumbs. Telling you that others were going to force your children to become gay, or cancel Christmas. All lies to make you afraid, and all the while promising a few more crumbs once the job creators got rich enough.
Like staunch conservative Bill Kristol said recently, in this moment we must all be Democrats. That is, until we save democracy, we must take power away from the Republican Party. And we must not let them have it back until they are again champions of democracy and the Republic that our founders built.