Guest column: Do Americans want a real democracy or a dictator?

Many American universities offer a course entitled History of Civilization. In that curriculum one finds a description of the evolution of what is termed western (European) thought and history from ancient times to the modern period. A predominant feature of the survey is the status of the individual. Up until the period known as the Enlightenment of the 17th century, common people were treated by ruling authorities as little better than livestock — that is, well enough so that they could perform useful chores.

That changed when the theories of John Locke and others began to permeate European cultures. It’s ironic that England, the nation whose government had gone further than others in giving common people a seat at the governing table, experienced the breakaway of one of its major colonies over their claimed loss of individual liberty. When the dust of the American Revolution had settled, a nation known as the United States of America emerged with a constitution designed to protect individual rights with the establishment of a democratic republic — republic means representative government and democratic means that representatives are chosen through voting by the people.

Before examining the democratic health of other nations, Americans should evaluate their estimation of our own democracy. Were our founders correct in believing in the efficacy of democracy? Were Abraham Lincoln and the northern army correct when they engaged in a four-year bloody struggle to guarantee, in Lincoln’s words, that a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal … can long endure?” Do Americans believe that today? The question is extremely relevant because we are approaching a presidential election and one of the major party candidates has said that, if elected, he wants to be a “dictator on day one” of his hoped-for term, and further, that he has good things to say about some of the world’s cruelest dictators: Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Victor Orban of Hungary and Kim Jong Un of North Korea.

These three autocrats have each been in power for an average of 15 years and have either no elections, as is the case in North Korea, or have rigged elections, as is the case with Russia and Hungary. Orban may be more temperate, but if a potential popular presidential candidate emerges in Russia, he is promptly dealt with (we all know that candidate Alexi Navalny was imprisoned and then murdered — also numerous critical reporters, at least 30, have been killed in Russia during Putin’s tenure.)

But the question remains, do Americans really want democracy, meaning regular elections in which the voters decide representation and policy? Or, would they rather have a dictator? Also, that question is confused, muddied up, by the unfounded claim by one of the current presidential candidates that our previous presidential election was unfair. Without honest elections there is no democracy. American election officials have always striven to have the fairest elections in the world and there is absolutely no proof that the 2020 presidential election was tainted. Not only did 60 court challenges produce no significant adverse evidence whatsoever, Chris Krebs, director of cybersecurity, has stated that, in his opinion, the 2020 presidential election was the most secure in our history.

Therefore, with faith that all of our city and county clerks throughout America strive for election purity, one would hope that, in their hearts of hearts, the American people do want to preserve our system of voters deciding the future of our country, rather than leaving it in the hands of a dictator. To that end, let us return to the faith of our fathers and support American democracy. Many good reasons exist: not only have millions of Americans been killed or wounded defending it for the past 235 years, but experience has shown us there is no better system.

One’s candidate does not always win, but the losers rights are protected and he will live to fight again. That is the true system: majority wins, but minority rights are protected. Again, quoting Lincoln, we fight for democracy so that “government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Ed Jones is a former member of the Thousand Oaks City Council and a former Ventura County Supervisor.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Guest column: Do Americans want a real democracy or a dictator?