A great American had a vision of democracy in America.  He called it government ‘of the people, by the people, for the people.’  I, and millions of others, have gazed with awe at those words chiseled on the walls of the Lincoln Memorial.  It comes to us from an age which now looks so distant and so strange.  What happened to that vision of Abraham Lincoln? 

We understand the references to ‘the people’, but have we, or they, given enough weight to the prepositions – of, by, and for?  Especially by the people.

Well then, it obviously all turns on the people.  They created the system; it exists for their benefit; and it is up to them to sustain it and keep it running as it should.    So, when people complain about their government, they might reflect that in the end, it is all down to them.

Having thought about it for sixty years or so, the best I can offer is that the whole shebang turns on the state of mind of the people.  Some nations are fortunate enough to have people with the necessary state of mind.  Most are not so fortunate.  The fortunate are in Western Europe and the UK and its former colonies.  What about the United States?

All our governance in what we call democracy turns on our subscription to the rule of law.  We elect people to make laws and we appoint people as jurors to decide whether someone has broken them. 

We understand the rule of law to stand for the following.  All people are equal under the law.  Those who are elected or appointed to take part in governance hold positions of trust.  They are there to serve us and not themselves.  The government can only deprive anyone of us of any right by due process of law.  It follows that any decision of government adverse to one of us – such as imprisonment for a crime – can only be taken pursuant to a decision of a judge who is independent of government or a group of people on a jury that represents the people as a whole.  Caprice is anathema.

In the old days, the judges used to refer issues of fact ‘to the country,’ and an accused pleading not guilty would be said ‘to have put himself on the country, which country you are.’  That was a great way to put it.

So, when we come to look at how government is of, by, and for the people, it is not just about how much people are prepared to tolerate from their government.  It is about the trouble we take to appoint people to positions of trust who look to be worthy of that appointment,  and the means we put in place to check that they are duly discharging their duties.  In our democracy, communal effort is essential to keep the wheels of government on track – and not just by voting at elections or sitting on a jury.  That is not just a matter of ‘checks and balances’.  It extends to the formation and conduct of political parties, an acceptance of the importance of conventions, and a recognition of the need for tolerance and restraint.  And then there is that old maxim for caution – all power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

There is nothing new or tricky about any of that.  So, we have those precepts in mind when we look at events in Europe a century ago.   Then nations of great substance succumbed to an abandonment of even a pretense to subscribing to the rule of law, and gave power to cruel and selfish dictators.

Angela Merkel, whom I greatly admire, thought deeply about freedom.  In 2003, she gave a speech Quo Vadis Deutschland?

Freedom is the joy of achievement, the flourishing of the individual, the celebration of difference, the rejection of mediocrity, personal responsibility…. If we are able to live in justice and solidarity again, freedom must be restored to our hierarchy of values, written clearly on every line.

In 2010, Merkel awarded a media prize to the artist who drew the cartoons of Mohammed.  The title of the speech was ‘The Secret of Freedom is Courage.’  If the secret of freedom is courage, ‘courage begins with overcoming our own despondency.’  (There is an echo here of Kant.)  The benefit of listening to Frau Merkel on freedom is that she knows what it is to live without it, and what might be required to win it – or to lose it. 

Again from Frau Merkel:

Sometimes my greatest fear is that we have somehow lost the inner strength to stand up for our way of life.  To which we can only say: if we have lost that, then we might also lose our prosperity and success.

We are getting this in translation, but ‘inner strength’ catches the eye. A man called Sebastian Haffner lived through the twenties and thirties and the rise of Hitler.  He described the failure of Germany in very simple terms as a kind of nervous breakdown that flowed from the want of a ‘solid inner kernel.’

The only thing that is missing is what in animals is called ‘breeding’.  This is a solid inner kernel that cannot be shaken by external pressures and forces, something noble and steely, a reserve of pride, principle and dignity to be drawn on in the hour of trial….  At the moment of truth, when other nations rise spontaneously to the occasion, the Germans collectively and limply collapsed.  They yielded and capitulated, and suffered a nervous breakdown….  The Kammergericht [superior court] toed the line.  No Frederick the Great was needed, not even Hitler had to intervene.  All that was required was a few Amtsgerichtsrats [judges] with a deficient knowledge of the law.

In a history of the twentieth century, I said:

What might be described as the failure of the better people of Italy has been described by a biographer of Mussolini in terms that could be transposed word for word to the Germans and Hitler.

Mussolini still needed their [the moderates’] help, for most of the liberal parliamentarians would look to them for a lead.  He also took careful note that chaos had been caused in Russia when representatives of the old order were defenestrated en masse during the revolution:  fascism could hardly have survived if the police, the magistrates, the army leaders and the civil service had not continued to work just as before, and the complicity of these older politicians was eagerly sought and helped to preserve the important illusion that nothing had changed.

The liberals failed to use the leverage afforded by his need for their approbation.  Most of them saw some good in fascism as a way of defending social order and thought Italians too intelligent and civilised to permit the establishment of a complete dictatorship.  Above all, there was the very persuasive argument that the only alternative was to return to the anarchy and parliamentary stalemate they remembered…. Mussolini had convincingly proved that he was the most effective politician of them all: he alone could have asked parliament for full powers and been given what he asked; he alone provided a defence against, and an alternative to, socialism.  And of course, the old parliamentarians still hoped to capture and absorb him into their own system in the long run; their optimism was encouraged by the fact that his fascist collaborators were so second-rate. 

Does that not seem to be word for word a correct rendition of how decent Germans probably reacted to Hitler? 

Still today you will find Christian apologists for Franco, and not just in Spain, who say that his fascism was preferable to republican socialism.  Mussolini had the other advantage that for reasons we now regard as obvious, no one outside Italy could take Mussolini seriously.  As his biographer reminds us, Mussolini was, rather like Berlusconi, seen as an ‘absurd little man’, a ‘second-rate cinema actor and someone who could not continue in power for long’, a ‘César de carnaval’, a ‘braggart and an actor’, and possibly ‘slightly off his head.’  Churchill always took Hitler seriously; he could never do that with that Italian buffoon.  The Fuhrer would betray his nation and kill himself and his mistress; the Italians would revolt from and then murder their Duce and his mistress, and hang them upside down in public. 

Franco ruled Spain as a dictator – Il Caudillo – for nearly forty years.  His weapons of repression included the death penalty, concentration camps, forced labour, and heavy censorship.  He got back into favour with the U S during the Cold War when they had a common enemy in Communism.  In the 1950’s, a cabinet of Opus Dei technocrats convinced him to move toward a market economy.  After his death, Spain moved toward democracy.  A Pact of Forgetting was introduced to encourage reconciliation.  Socialists and Conservatives now clash over how to deal with that bleak past

On 19 May 1939, there was a grand victory parade along the Castellana, renamed the Avenida del Generalissimo.  The Caudillo would not be coming to town on a donkey to receive his Hosannas.  Antony Beevor says:

A huge construction of wood and cardboard had been erected to form a triumphal arch on which the word ‘Victory’ was displayed.  On each side the name ‘FRANCO’ was repeated three times, and linked with the heraldic arms of the Catholic monarchs.

Franco took the salute at this march past from a large tribune.

What, then, does all this tell us of the current governance of the United States? 

I referred earlier to the need to respect conventions.  People who conduct themselves solely by reference to the law are not to be trusted.  I am not referring to the very English notion of the ‘spirit of cricket’, but to the proposition that people who have no respect for the rules of the game will ruin it unless they are curbed or removed. 

An article in The New York Times referred to a biography of Trump by Tim O’Brien.

The Constitution was built on this idea that the president would have enough decency and morality that they just wouldn’t run around exploiting the gaps….  And for Trump, it’s like red meat. This idea that Trump’s mentor was Roy Cohn was profoundly wrong. Donald Trump’s mentor was Fred from day one. His father showed him how to exploit the government system, the legal system and business. His whole worldview is built around the idea that you exploit systems for personal gain, and there’s nothing wrong with doing that, because the world’s populated by sharks and you just have to be the biggest shark.

That sounds spot on for Trump.  The predator spots the weak point of his prey in the law of the jungle.  He is the eternal spoiled child who throws toys out of his cot, and daily seeks personal vengeance against those who stood in his way.  The first aim of government is to keep the peace and end vendettas.   Trump’s whole life is a contradiction of the promise of ‘Tranquillity’ and ‘general Welfare’ referred to in the Constitution.

Here are some failures of governance in the U S that could not in my view occur here in Australia, or in the UK, Canada or New Zealand – or I think the major countries in Western Europe.

First, it is common ground that Trump avoided military service and paying tax.  It is absurd to suggest a person with that record could be elected to parliament here – a requirement for someone wishing to lead the government.

Secondly, Trump is not just an incontinent liar.  He appears to have no notion of, let alone respect for, truth.  On a daily basis, he is guilty of misconduct that would see the CEO of a public company sacked immediately.  He is unfit for any form of public office – such as running a chook raffle.  If by some chance, he got into parliament, he would not last a day.  Misleading parliament is a sackable offence.  Possibly his worst misconduct is to talk down the United States by his attacks on his predecessor that are nauseating and show gross disloyalty to the nation.  This is another instance of conduct that would be unthinkable in a decent entity.  Imagine – ‘Germany was going down under Frau Merkel, but I intervened to save it.’

Thirdly, nothing remotely resembling ICE would be tolerated here.  Rien.  The U S Brownshirts.  Government licensed thugs.

Fourthly, his claimed faith in God and the Bible insults both, and does religion great harm.  Religion plays almost no part in politics here or in the U K.

Fifthly, his obsession with marking his presence and name in the most grotesque bad taste – rather like Il Caudillo would of itself convince the people – remember them? – that he is at best dangerously unhinged.

Sixthly, he broke his promise and was driven by his ego, and against advice, to embark on yet another failed, endless war.

Seventhly, he has creamed millions off the people of America by putting personal profit above his duty to the people.  The word ‘brazen’ dies on our lips.  And the people cannot complain that he never told them that he thought he could flout the law and convention – and then settle for an ovation, while turning around with that banal grin at the grinning goons behind him.  For that he relies on the Mussolini gambit – who could take such a clown seriously?

Eighthly, and this list is far from complete, the result is that the U S barely has one friend in the world.  It has nervy allies, but not one friend.  He has shattered the standing in the world that the U S built after World War II.  He makes up to killers like Putin and Kim, while Xi beams at him gratefully, and the erstwhile friends of the Great Republic realise that the commitments of the U S are written in pencil – and they have accepted that if they do not haver a seat on the table, they are on the menu.

Ninthly, he surrounded himself with idiots who create mayhem with almost everything they touch.

Tenthly, he relishes the long history of Tammany Hall and gerrymandering in U S elections.  A decision of the Supreme Court licensed corporations to spend millions upon millions to secure a seat in a manner that would be seen as obscene here or in Europe.   This is to us corruption – Texas is seen as a very ‘dear’ state.  The English in the eighteenth century referred to ‘patronage’, and Sir Lewis Namier remarked that ‘Bribery, to be really effective, has to be widespread and open’.

Finally, most of the so-called checks and balances have been powerless to stop the rot, and those in Congress or the Supreme Court guilty of this failure should be ashamed of themselves.  Their children will have to live with the question: ‘And just what did your folk do during the Dark Age?’

Now, we have our problems here.  We have let the Westminster System die by attrition.  The two-party system is at its best shaky.  The quality of people being put up for election goes down as does the quality of the people who run those parties.  ‘Populism’ is bearing its ugly teeth here and in the U K as people turn their backs on established parties.  We are threatened with a pervasive sense of helplessness. 

Well, all that is down to us, the people.  But it is nothing like the dreadful and frightening failure of governance in the United States. 

Abraham Lincoln asked whether any nation so conceived could long endure.  Who knows?  But if you ask who is responsible, is it not ‘We the People?’