Opinion: After the 2024 presidential election, what kind of government will we have?

We are well into the 2024 presidential campaign and many of us are worried about what will happen after the election. Will our government continue to be a democratic government or become an authoritarian government under an autocrat?

There has been talk recently and a published plan from former President Donald Trump of retribution against people and agencies he does not like. He wants to eliminate the employment protections of civil servants so he can replace them with people loyal to himself. He plans to abolish the Education Department, which provides much essential funding for our public schools. In particular, he does not like the independence of the Justice Department. He has actually published statements that set forth his plans to concentrate power in the presidency. Trump’s adviser speaks of seizing pockets of independence in the government, like the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. All of these actions point to a government led by a very authoritarian president.

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After years of living under authoritarian governments, our founders were determined not to have such a government. Instead, they wanted a government, as Adams said “of laws not men.” They had had enough of authoritarian rulers. The founders saw themselves as belonging to the new age of doing things in a “rational – legal way” under elected leaders in a republic. Rather than depending on personal rulers, they set forth principles in a constitution by which they would be governed and not be dependent on the whims of an individual ruler.

I say all of this because, in spite of the careful work of the founders to establish the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, human nature still has a tendency to be drawn to personal leaders such as autocrats. We face a threat of turning back, not to monarchs, but to a single authoritarian autocrat. Clear examples of such a turning back were seen before WWII, but also more recently in Hungary, Turkey and Russia.

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This is our greatest danger. People develop special attractions to a person and identify themselves with a particular leader together with his group of loyal followers. Laws, policies and procedures take time to develop and need to be debated, which is hard work. It is much easier to follow slogans and propaganda. People don’t enjoy thinking about a government system with important agencies and reasonable regulations for those with power. A well-functioning democracy needs an enlightened electorate and one that seeks to understand the issues, not one that simply is loyal to a person. A good education system available to all citizens is important to help ensure that citizens will avoid making decisions on the basis of personalities they may like, but look to the real effects of policies.

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An important sign that our modern government is slipping backward to the days of government by autocrats are in the frequent descriptions of people as either “loyal” or “not loyal.” We have heard those terms used frequently by former President Trump, beginning with the director of the FBI, whom he fired for being insufficiently loyal. Autocratic rulers depend on the personal loyalties of followers. They gain power through violence or corrupt means of promising favors to selected people who will be loyal. Oligarchies develop this way, as we have seen in Russia and other autocracies. Loyalty is not a civic value, but a religious or emotional value given to a divine being or very personal leader.

The major civic values needed in governments are integrity, honesty and truthfulness. Refraining from violence against political rivals is essential in a democracy, but as we have seen violence was used on Jan. 6 and violence and intimidation continues against political rivals in words and actions by followers of the former president.

We live in a democracy to which we pledge allegiance. We do not pledge allegiance to a person. The office that a person occupies is what gives them whatever authority and power they may have. That authority and power is defined in descriptions of official duties and is not dependent on the person occupying the office. This is very clear in our democracy.

Our responsibility is to know and keep the democratic principles by which our government operates and vote for those who will protect those principles and not change the government to increase the power of the Office of the President, as well as making naked falsehoods about a previous “stolen election.”

Rev. Robert L. Montgomery, Ph.D, lives in Black Mountain.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Opinion: US faces threat of turning back to autocracy if Trump elected