Symptoms showing demise of free nation
In recent years, democracies in Russia, Turkey, Venezuela and elsewhere have withered and died as autocratic leaders gradually strangled the life out of the democratic process.
Those experiences show that democracies do not always die with tanks in the streets. Instead, they show that a democracy is in danger when its leaders do the following things:
▪ Lie continually.
▪ Deny the legitimacy of the electoral process.
▪ Threaten to jail political opponents.
▪ Attack the free press as the enemy of the people.
▪ Disparage the legal justice system.
▪ Sabotage independent investigations into their actions.
▪ Serve the interests of a wealthy elite rather than those of the great majority.
▪ Conceal their own financial entanglements.
▪ Encourage intolerance and violence, scapegoating minorities and homosexuals.
▪ Claim to restore national greatness that had been squandered by their predecessors.
More and more Americans see these alarming symptoms arising in America. Across the nation, and here in the Lowcountry, these concerned individuals have organized to defend our democracy. They call their nonpartisan organization “Indivisible.”
Raymond Dominick
Bluffton
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This story was originally published January 25, 2018 at 2:26 PM with the headline "Symptoms showing demise of free nation."