Our fragile democracy and its future

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The creation of the Magna Carta in 1215 was a turning point in world history. It took power from the elite few (King John of England, in this case) and granted broad powers and rights to the people.

The United States and many other nations followed the Magna Carta’s example, establishing democratic forms of government and enhancing liberties. But are we heading backward toward the consolidated, intolerable, and unrestrained rulers of old?

Losing our grip on democracy

I think most would agree that democratic-style governments depend on citizens who have useful information at hand, sound judgment, and hesitate to use violence to change leadership. A “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” as President Abraham Lincoln would say.

No one knew more than Lincoln just how fragile the balance of power could be.

The United States has witnessed assassinations and attempted assassinations of presidents and other governmental figures. Likewise, the nation has plied its people and resources into countering threats from abroad.

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and later the entire Soviet Union, it appeared that the battle was officially over, and democracy had won. However, averting a takeover by invasion from an enemy is one thing, but what about crumbling from within?

Plenty of governments have been undermined from within by failing to uphold core societal principles, morals, and ideals. We always tend to point to the godless, immoral, tyrannical communist governments as examples of anti-democratic behavior. Could the United States and Europe be heading in that direction?

The “Save Democracy” Party

If the Democrat Party did not have the mainstream media behind them, their elected official count would be decimated. The national media has pushed the Democrat propaganda forward and erased the errors.

Think about it. The Democrat propaganda said Donald Trump would start World War III, but it was all quiet. Biden enters as the “unity” guy and the world is on fire with his Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently offering an international insurance policy to engage with Iran if they attack Israel (and the U.S. has a deficit of 45,000 recruits for the armed forces).

The U.S. Constitution currently allows for accountable governance and a peaceful transfer of power by the people without violent struggles. Many rising Democrats in Washington, D.C., consider the Constitution outdated.

Our nation has had its highs and lows. The country has endured slavery, civil war, depression, and political strife and survived them all.

I grin when young adults, nearly all Democrats, tell me how the nation was in jeopardy on January 6 when a crowd of unarmed retirees rioted on Capitol Hill (many walked inside the Capitol Building peacefully). I remind them that a group of Puerto Rican nationalists shot up the legislative floor with semiautomatic weapons in the early 1950s.

Numerous groups attempted to overthrow the government in the 1960s and 1970s, including Barack Obama’s confidant Bill Ayers, who, leading the Weather Underground, bombed the Capitol Building.

The media and Democrat leaders still push the lie that then-President Trump called neo-Nazis and white supremacists “very fine people.” The Hitler comparisons are so over the top that only those devoid of historical knowledge can believe them.

The Democrat “Save Democracy” Party stole the 2016 primaries from Senator Bernie Sanders. Then the Clinton campaign, along with Fusion GPS and law firm Perkins Coie, staged the bogus “Russiagate” collusion-hoax scandal to stage a soft coup of the Trump presidency.

It was confirmed that the Obama administration spied on the candidate Trump and his campaign, obtaining FISA warrants based on government-forged documentation.

In 2020, the DNC and the national media colluded to eliminate Joe Biden’s competition, leaving only Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren drawing the same voters and diluting the results.

The 2024 primaries were completely rigged for Biden, excluding all others. The Democrat “Save Democracy” Party was quite public about their deceit.

Of course, the media and Democrat leaders lied about Biden’s mental infirmity for several years and then recently crowned Kamala Harris, a former last-place finisher in the 2020 primaries and the current incapable vice president, the exclusive winner of the Democrat Party, forsaking Democrat voters and barring any other challengers.

These Democrat attempts to circumvent our democratic form of government are outrageous. It’s called “confession through projection,” meaning they are boldly doing whatever they accuse someone else of doing.

Is it different now?

Our nation is beginning to resemble George Orwell’s book “1984.” By resemble, I mean frighteningly close to the Marxist model that Orwell described.

The Covid disaster showed that the population could be forced into a herd mentality and led around against their own best interests. Mask-wearing outside, social distancing, sheltering in place, and forcing experimental vaccines were all part of a non-scientific show of power from the governmental bureaucracy.

If you spoke out against the abuses, the government and the tech oligarchs censored your comments. You could even be fired for your thoughts and resistance to the government’s dictates. People who were later found to be reliable sources of information had their careers ruined.

Of course, the draconian rules did not apply to the government elites, like D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who thrust them upon the citizens.

The worrisome point is the number of people who bought the lies and supported the injustice. In my last column, I spoke about people in our own community who believe forms of political discrimination or violence are acceptable (see https://thecitizen.com/2024/07/29/who-and-what-are-the-real-threats-to-democracy/).

The death of George Floyd was used by private activist groups, many affiliated with government agencies in one way or another, to create havoc across the nation. Arson, looting, and violence all occurred at the urging of the activist groups. Police were attacked, and entire city blocks were taken over.

The irony of them crying “systemic racism” while burning minority-owned businesses and grocery stores in minority neighborhoods was unbelievable.

The Democrat “Save Democracy” Party began the “defund the police” campaign, and crime rates jumped. State, county, and city governments were allowing violent criminals to walk the streets without bail after committing serious crimes.

Public statues were torn down throughout, and city and federal government buildings burned in Portland and Seattle. The Biden Department of Justice did not prosecute the offenders.

State governments used the pandemic as an excuse to loosen election laws and procedures during the 2020 election. One Democrat government after another landed in controversy, and some had courts rule against them later.

Recently, the Trump assassination attempt barely registered on the national media spectrum for more than a week and is almost tolerated.

Pundits on both sides of the aisle are predicting violent protests if Trump is elected. Antifa and related organizations use violence to force change.

Are we entering a phase where the information is closely controlled, domestic spying is allowed, and certain political violence will not be prosecuted? Has this type of behavior become acceptable to the younger generations? If it has, like nations before us, we will lose our democratic form of government.

[Brown is a former mayor of Peachtree City and served two terms on the Fayette County Board of Commissioners. You can read all his columns by clicking on his photo below.]

29 COMMENTS

  1. So many myths by Steve Brown. Why is this stuff even printed. I know we have a right to free speech but that comes with the caveat that we speak the truth.
    His description of Jan 6th insurrectionists as “peaceful unarmed retirees” is an outright lie.
    If you are not a registered Democrat you do not have any say about how they pick their candidate or how they run their convention. As Waltz would say ” mind your own business.”
    Three Ga State election board members attended a Trump rally and were commended by Trump for doing a fantastic job. Is that not election interference?

    • It’s quite obvious that Democrats don’t want any transparency or accountability in elections. They don’t want picture ID’s except if you want to get into the Democratic Convention. I’d praise anybody that fights to ensure public confidence in our election system Democrat or Republican.

      Election interference, is forcing federal agencies to handing voter registration forms to known non-citizens to encourage them to vote. Then preventing requiring proof of citizenship before their application is accepted. They go so low as filing lawsuits preventing the Secretary of State from checking citizenship status, too bad for them they lost that one in court. Further they tried to prevent the requiring the hanging of posters warning non-citizens its illegal to vote at the polls and election offices.

      Notice a pattern here?

  2. Fantasy MAGA diatribe by our local commentator Steve Brown. I’d suggest he sticks to analysis of local, municipal and county level issues. Going beyond that only shows the limits of his brain capabilities.

  3. The Democrats always come unglued in the comments whenever Steve Brown starts telling the truth on them.

    This says it all:

    The 2024 primaries were completely rigged for Biden, excluding all others. The Democrat “Save Democracy” Party was quite public about their deceit.

    Of course, the media and Democrat leaders lied about Biden’s mental infirmity for several years and then recently crowned Kamala Harris, a former last-place finisher in the 2020 primaries and the current incapable vice president, the exclusive winner of the Democrat Party, forsaking Democrat voters and barring any other challengers.

  4. I really struggle to understand how Steve goes from insightful reporting about the Peachtree City Council to these absurd Alex Jones style diatribes that are so far removed from reality. I know these commentaries get a lot of views and interaction which websites really need to keep going, but I wish he’d stick to one a month or something and keep the rest focused locally. Reading these has me sad and laughing almost at the same time. It’s really humorous seeing the mental gymnastics needed to cast aside the January 6th insurrection (something so unbelievably unprecedented in the history of the United States and an utterly shameful chapter in this country’s storied history) and at the same time it’s sad to see the sordid decline of a man who once commanded respect in this city.

    • Sir, you have proven my point regarding the hard-shelled bubble of PTC. If the narrative still remains and continues to feed the collective conscience of the body politic that a rally attended by 1+million citizens in the District of Columbia equals an “insurrection”, then there lies a disparity in logic and reasoning. That is the same reasoning that equated cv19 to the Black Plague. Quite a successful marketing campaign intended to foment anxiety without providing the body politic with what actually happened. The uniparty is equally responsible and the conscience of the nation is the intended victim.

      Were the crowd to be so exorcised to become violent, how many bureaucrats and politicians would have survived the day? Balance that thinking against the few thousands of rioters who destroyed Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, Saint Louis, et al which Mr. Brown cites above.

        • So, I have yet another point proven. Personality jabs are a signal result of the conditioning successes. Bromides aside, it would be constructive to recognize the conditioning, and come to the realization that they were wrong, regardless of motive and alter how we see what lay before us. We do not live in a democracy. We are guaranteed a representative Republic and those representatives need to be held accountable. This includes the media who were guaranteed funding (with strings) in the 2012 NDAA.

          • I wonder how recently you started to hold your incredibly odd convictions. Were you an RFK Jr original antivaxxer or a post-covid one? Were you a longstanding Alex Jones deep state conspiracy theorist or a post-Trump one? I don’t know your age, but I hope it’s young enough for your family to have hope for you to turn things around and realize you’ve been played by a New York con-man who is only interested in himself.

          • Responding to… trailsbeforewhales August 7, 2024 at 10:34 am
            I wonder how recently you started to hold your incredibly odd convictions. Were you an RFK Jr original antivaxxer or a post-covid one? Were you a longstanding Alex Jones deep state conspiracy theorist or a post-Trump one? I don’t know your age, but I hope it’s young enough for your family to have hope for you to turn things around and realize you’ve been played by a New York con-man who is only interested in himself.

            Presumptuous are we? Seems as though someone has a deep-seated man crush on A Jones. Certainly, it seems as though the programming has locked itself deeply into the subconscience.

            As for cv19, people were programmed to accept it as a fait complete and there was no other alternative but to bow down to mandates. I said “no” a priori because I was forewarned and prepared for the psyop presented. The data and information was available to make the call, but those who need a master, the gap was filled by people with monied and controlling aims using a media paid for by us.

            RFK Jr….he has written about the nature of those who perpetrated the crime, but he is a Kennedy and his family’s storied history should be enough to know that the “fruit does not fall far from the tree”…another globalist.

            No, I am not a fan of control/tyranny hoping that human beings have the self discipline to do no harm to one’s neighbor, directly or indirectly. As Mr. Brown has catalogued in his pieces about the underhanded deals our city’s government is cutting without dissent to deals made which back counties and states’ taxpayers into a corner without any comcern that those deals rely on taking from one and giving to another and calling it “charity”.

            That is a fight our Founders fought and it is one I will continue because it is assumed in the Oath.

  5. It is quite clear from the limited commentary here that PTC is a bubble with an extremely hard shell. No real unvarnished information gets in. If all one gets as news some talking head, faux or the other three letter agencies (abc, cbs, nbc, pbs and their cable versions), then the opinion expressed appears to have any value when juxtaposed against reality.

    Let’s start with the points that Mr. Brown makes about the real tyranny displayed by the Democrat party “selecting” (ahead of the convention) a candidate for President. I believe that violates the will of the Democrat electorate who chose Mr. Biden as their candidate in addition to the rules established within the Party for “selection”. PTC citizens are all about rules, and yet, only when it suits an individual citizen’s world view.

    Now, how about the person who’s been “selected” and what Mr. Brown didn’t mention directly (but may have inadvertently alluded to) is that we are a nation of rules guided, first and foremost, by our Constitution. That “selection” is in clear violation of the US Constitution (Article 2 Section 1). Neither of her parents were naturalized citizens when she was born in Oakland CA. One does not have to look far to find her birth certificate.

    His points about the chicanery involved (with much raw data to support) involved in elections, the leveraging of good peoples’ gullibility regarding mandates by Government bodies (federal, state, and municipal), and defunding police are spot on, if not soft.

    Recognize that Mr. Brown’s points appear only to be a reflection of conditioning…conditioning the body politic that politicians are somehow “above” the body politic and their actions based upon greed or other bent. That that leads to a pitting of one group over another without any basis in moral foundation or law.

  6. Good morning Sir, I think we all need to do like former Lt Gov. Duncan said to vote for Vice-President Harris for President in order to save our Country and save the Republican Party. You currently have a tyrant that have taken over the values of the Republican Party. Vote Harris to save the Country and Save the Republican Party!!!!!

    • I think you missed one of Steve’s points by throwing the word fascist out there. The works has a specific definition exampled by specific actions. as dors Nazi. slandering people with these words even if their actions don’t support it is part if the problem abd not the solution

    • The word fascist has a specific meaning. it involves taking actions to persecute political foes and other nefarious acts to gain or preserve power. As both parties have example if doing the past 5 years. it’s definition is not expressing ones opinion as Steve has done.

    • Democracy, huh? your party just nominated a candidate who got ZERO primary votes. They usurped the primary process the last 2 times out – cheating out Bernie Sanders and this time blocking anyone from running against Biden, stringing him along till they could replace Biden with possibly the only person in DC dumber than him – the Cackler.

  7. As the first time in a long while the former mayor didn’t trash our current Council, which lends me to saying that much of what he has written is indeed factual. So if I’m correct, and I am certainly no fan, how could it be characterized as “tripe.” We all have opinions.

    • STF – It takes no work and zero brainpower to claim someone’s views are misguided because they assumedly get them from Fox News. I see no Fox News references in the letter. I share a lot of the same views and I watch maybe 5% Fox News, just as much CNN, and I consume info from both sides and I decide which seems most believable.

      How about instead doing some work and research? Take several of the letter writer’s points, and do research, and prove them untrue. Read info from both sides – not just your usual sources. Who knows, your eyes might even be opened when you look at other sources of information than your usual sources, whatever they may be.

      • Hi Wing – How many times must I point out on this website that American democracy is threatened by a president who attempts to overthrow an election that he clearly lost. When he could not get a single judge in 50 court proceedings to verify his false claim, he incited an angry mob to violently break into the U.S. Capitol and stop the official confirmation of the election results. To this moment, he falsely claims that he was cheated out of the presidency.

        One political party has rewarded that assault on the Constitution by inexplicably nominating this outlaw for a second term. Our democracy is under assault, but Steve is looking in the wrong direction for the culprit.

        There – I’ve restated the obvious yet another time. Believe what your own eyes saw, or believe Fox-world’s incredulous propaganda spin on it. Absolutely nothing else matters in this election.

        • Forget about the candidates, STF – which platform aligns more with you:
          Open borders vs secure borders
          Politicized justice vs rule of law
          More govt control vs less govt control
          Higher taxes vs lower taxes
          Reliance on foreign oil vs reliance on American oil

          Let that be your guide. Vote the platform, not the person standing on the platform.

          • Show me a single person in DC with any integrity. Joe Lieberman left years ago.

            You’re still voting on the platform.

            Now you have Walz – who might be even more liberal than Kamala (who remember was picked as THE most liberal senator). Walz let Minneapolis burn in the George Floyd riots. He delayed the deployment of the National Guard, blaming the city for improper paperwork (a BS reason). I know a thing or two about the Twin Cities – spent a lot of time there and grew up near there – it is a cess pool and has only slid downhill since Walz has been in charge.

          • Sorry Wing – When a candidate demonstrates that he will not uphold the Constitution when it conflicts with his selfish motives, I believe him. Our Republic is worth far more than my preferred governmental programs.

            Seems like a Jewish carpenter once said, “A bad tree cannot bear good fruit.” I think he was on to something.