It’s becoming impractical for Republicans to cry foul or claim victimization from political partisan lying when they are accused of attempting to change democracy to autocracy in America. Because last week Republicans revealed, yet again, that they have every intention to transform American democracy into American autocracy!!!
Traditionally the holy trinity for conservative Republicans has been:
1) one-person-one-vote democracy
2) free-market economy with small limited regulation government
3) American military superiority
Racial demographic change in America combined with Republicans’ self-awareness that their current and future political support exists among the shrinking racial population and not the growing one, has transformed conservative Republicans to Make America Great Again (MAGA) Republicans with serious democracy to autocracy intentions. The first sign that Republicans were serious about converting American democracy to autocracy came from Donald Trump. During his 2020 presidential campaign, Trump repeated the lie that illegal votes were going to be voted and after his defeat, he keeps repeating the big lie that his election victory was stolen.
Unfortunately for American democracy, MAGA Republicans drank Trump’s bogus stolen election cool-aid. According to the bipartisan organization, States United Democracy Center, 41 MAGA Republican-controlled state legislatures introduced 216 bills in 2021 that do everything from stripping their secretaries of state, governors, and nonpartisan election boards of authority to count votes in future elections, and giving that authority to state legislators who will determine whose vote will or will not be counted, to criminalizing election procedures and practices that have traditionally been legal.
The state of Georgia, with its MAGA Republican-controlled state legislature, is the democracy to autocracy state leader among all American states. Since Georgia MAGA Republicans were unhappy with Donald Trump’s Georgia election loss to Joe Biden, but legally could do nothing about it, they changed the law for future elections allowing Georgia Republicans to autocratically decide what citizen democracy had decided before Georgia Republicans changed democracy to autocracy.
Georgia MAGA Republicans passed a law falsely named the Election Integrity Act of 2021 when the more appropriate name would be the Voter Suppression Act of 2021. The new law gives the power and authority to the MAGA Republican-controlled state legislature to overrule local election board operating procedures, invalidate votes from any part of the state, and invalidate any decision voted for by citizens for any reason Republicans decide is necessary. Stopping the democratic practice of counting every citizen’s legally cast vote regardless of who or what they voted for was not enough for autocratic Republicans.
MAGA Republicans also want to stop the democratic expression of history, information, and art. PEN America, a non-profit working to ensure that people everywhere have the freedom to create literature that conveys information and ideas that express their views, and also works to guarantee access for everyone to the views, ideas, and works of literature of others, said in 2021 26 Republican-controlled state legislatures across the United States introduced 66 separate bills intended to restrict the teaching, training, and discussions of race and racism in America.
12 of the 66 bills have become the law of the land. All 12 bills that became law target K–12 schools, 4 include provisions that would impact colleges and universities, and 4 include a focus on state agencies, state-funded institutions, and all places of learning. 6 of the new laws specifically ban the teaching of “critical race theory,” making a total of 20 state-level bills introduced in 2021 with the same teaching prohibitions. And 6 of the new laws ban teaching or using curricular materials from “The 1619 Project,” bringing to a total of 17 state-level bills book banning the 1619 Project introduced in 2021.
North Dakota is a democracy to autocracy state leader because it transformed education democracy into education autocracy. Its HB 1508 law makes it illegal for K–12 public schools to include, what Gov. Doug Burgum and the North Dakota state legislature refer to as “critical race theory”, in all school curriculums throughout the state. Based on the new law North Dakota legally defines “critical race theory” as “the theory that racism is not merely the product of learned individual bias or prejudice, but that racism is systemically embedded in American society and the American legal system to facilitate racial inequality”
Speaking to the autocratic silence of truth North Dakota’s new law creates the North Dakota ACLU said: “It is natural that many will interpret a ban on critical race theory to mean a ban on discussing or raising issues of race in the classroom at all. How is a history teacher supposed to discuss slavery, the civil rights era, or teach high school students about the history of redlining, an explicitly systemic policy initiative that purposefully segregated housing?”
Nick Archuleta, president of North Dakota United, the union which represents North Dakota teachers, has denounced North Dakota’s truth silencing law saying: “Like most Americans, I believe in American exceptionalism. This country has much to be proud of as a world leader. And I also believe that part of what makes this nation exceptional is our ability to not shy away from our past. We have not been perfect, but we have a history of examining our past, learning from our past, and taking seriously our ongoing desire to form a more perfect Union. That is not CRT (Critical Race Theory); that is education.”
North Dakota created their MAGA law transforming education democracy into education autocracy even though state legislators conceded that critical race theory is not being taught in North Dakota schools. One state senator described the law as “preemptive” therefore justification for changing democracy to autocracy. Any American looking for hope that Republicans are still committed to American democracy, as opposed to being committed to changing American democracy to autocracy, just got revealed to them last week the most dangerous indication to date, that Republicans are no longer committed to American democracy.
Last week the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the philosophical face and largest group of America’s conservative Republicans, held its annual meeting outside of the United States, for the first time in its 48-year history, on foreign soil in Hungary, a country considered to be the world’s premier example of how to transform democracy to autocracy, because for the last 12 years under Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s leadership, Hungary has operated as what Orbán refers to as an “illiberal democracy” which in truth is autocracy disguised as a democracy.
Since Orbán’s 2010 election as Prime Minister, he has used political power to change Hungary’s constitution from democratic to autocratic, by changing it from a constitution with strong institutions that prevented a Hungarian individual from acquiring excessive authority. To a constitution that weakens or eliminates the power of institutions that could prevent a Hungarian individual from acquiring excessive authority. The changes Orbán made to Hungary’s constitution allowed him to pack Hungarian judicial courts with political cronies, stifle free and honest media, adopt an inhumane immigration policy, and suffocate academic freedom.
Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, delivers advice to Republicans on how to change democracy to autocracy during a session of CPAC in Budapest, Hungary last Thursday
All the changes that are necessary to transform democracy to autocracy. During the delivery of his in-person keynote speech at the CPAC annual meeting, Orbán instructed MAGA Republicans on how to change democracy to autocracy saying: “We have to take back the institutions in Washington and Brussels. Have your own media. It’s the only way to point out the insanity of the progressive left, the problem is that the western media is adjusted to the leftist viewpoint. Those who taught reporters in universities already had progressive leftist principles. Of course, the GOP has its media allies but they can’t compete with the mainstream liberal media. My friend, Tucker Carlson is the only one who puts himself out there. His show is the most popular. What does it mean? It means programs like his should be broadcasted day and night. Or as you say 24/7.”
Illiberal democracy means anti-gender, anti-European, anti-diversity, anti-rule of law, and above all else anti-one-person-one-vote to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. His anti-one-person-one-vote is probably the most attractive component of his illiberal democracy to MAGA Republicans. Hungary’s elections are heavily tilted against anyone or any political party in opposition to Orbán. In 2010, Orbán amended the Constitution to cut the size of Hungary’s parliament in half, and then he gerrymandered the entire country into new electoral districts, drawn with no input from the opposition, that favored him. Gerrymandering that’s still working for him 12 years later, on election night this year, with 98 percent of the vote counted, Orbán and his Fidesz political party won 53 percent of the vote but 83 percent of the districts.
Orbán’s autocratic minority rule over Hungary’s majority is the ultimate inspiration for Republicans who fear racial demographic change in America, that’s why CPAC Republicans traveled 5,390 miles away from the United States, to worship and learn the ways of democracy changed to autocracy. Republicans’ 5,390-mile pilgrimage to submerge themselves in the philosophy and methodology of tyranny, should cause all democracy-loving Americans to lose sleep at night because it’s Republicans’ best indication yet, of their democracy to autocracy ultimate intention!!!