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      When Their Idea of Liberty Is Your Idea of Death

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      At the heart of the American ethos is the contested idea of freedom.In the video announcing his 2024 re-election bid — pointedly called “Freedom” — President Biden staked out his vision, declaring:Around the country, MAGA extremists are lining up to take on bedrock freedoms, cutting Social Security that you’ve paid for your entire life, while cutting taxes from the very wealthy, dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books and telling people who they can love all while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote.“The question we’re facing,” Biden told viewers, “is whether in the years ahead, we will have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer,” adding:Every generation of Americans will face the moment when they have to defend democracy. Stand up for our personal freedom. Stand up for the right to vote and our civil rights. And this is our moment.The 2024 election shows every sign of becoming a partisan battle to claim ownership of the ideal of freedom, with each side determined to persuade voters that the opposition’s assertions are not just false but a threat to individual and group rights.This dispute is possible because freedom as an abstraction is fraught with multiple and often conflicting meanings. The debate over where to draw the lines between freedom, liberty, rights, democracy, responsibility, autonomy, obligation, justice, fairness and citizenship has been going on for centuries, but has steadily intensified with the success of the liberation movements of the past seven decades — the civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights and sexual rights revolutions.In sharp contrast to Biden, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, in “The Courage to Be Free” — his campaign book, published in February — warns that “the threat to freedom is not limited to the actions of governments, but also includes a lot of aggressive, powerful institutions hellbent on imposing a woke agenda on our country.”The enemies of freedom, DeSantis contends, are “entrenched elites that have driven our nation into the ground,” elites that “control the federal bureaucracy, lobby shops on K Street, corporate media, Big Tech companies and universities.”These privileged few, DeSantis argues, “use undemocratic means to foist everything from environmental, social, and governance (E.S.G.) policies on corporations, forcing as well critical race theory on public schools,” in what the Florida governor calls “an attempt to impose ruling class ideology on society.”This debate fits into a larger context famously described by the political philosopher Isaiah Berlin in his 1958 Oxford University speech, “Two Concepts of Liberty”:If I am prevented by others from doing what I could otherwise do, I am to that degree unfree; and if this area is contracted by other men beyond a certain minimum, I can be described as being coerced, or, it may be, enslaved.Positive freedom, Berlin continued,derives from the wish on the part of the individual to be his own master. I wish my life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind. I wish to be the instrument of my own, not of other men’s, acts of will. I wish to be a subject, not an object.Jefferson Cowie, a history professor at Vanderbilt, captured the intensity and depth of division over freedom during the civil rights movement in his book “Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for history this week.Cowie wrote that the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, in his “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever” inaugural speech, on Jan. 14, 1963,invoked “freedom” 25 times — more than Martin Luther King Jr. used the term later that year in his “I Have a Dream” address at the March on Washington. “Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us,” Wallace told his audience, “and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South.”For Wallace, in other words, the right to maintain segregation was a form of freedom.The dichotomy between the notions of freedom promulgated by George Wallace and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. continues to polarize the nation today.Rogers M. Smith, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote by email in response to my inquiry about the contest over freedom:Biden stands in the liberal tradition going back to F.D.R., which holds that to be truly free, people have to be able to meet their material needs, so that they have opportunities for their diverse pursuits of happiness; and they also need democratic institutions giving them a share in shaping their collective destinies.Ronald Reagan, according to Smith, “thought freedom meant being largely free of government interference in people’s lives, whether through regulation or assistance. He did believe in freedom as democratic self-governance.”For Trump and DeSantis, Smith argued, freedom is more constrained and restrictive. For these two:Freedom means having governmental policies that protect the ways of life they favor against those they don’t. Their notion of freedom is the narrowest: in fact, it is primarily an argument for using coercive governmental power, and in Trump’s case private violence, against all who they see as threats to their preferred ways of life. They support democracy as long as, but only as long as, it produces the results they want.Jack Citrin, a political scientist at Berkeley, pointed out in his email that different types of freedom can impinge on each other as well as create different winners and losers:Negative liberty is freedom from external constraints, particularly from the government. This is the dominant idea, I think, in the Bill of Rights. It is linked to individualism and libertarianism. So I am free to carry a gun on the right, free to have an abortion or change my sex on the left. Positive liberty means the freedom to act to provide collective goods so it is easy to see that there can be a tension between the two.As with many political concepts, Citrin continued:There is an elasticity in this term that allows competing parties to stake a claim for their version of freedom. Biden paints Trump as a threat to one’s freedom to have an abortion or to vote; Trump claims the deep state is a threat to your privacy or legal rights. In addition, one group’s freedom constrains another’s.On April 29, Conor Friedersdorf published “Ron DeSantis’s Orwellian Redefinition of Freedom” in The Atlantic. As its headline suggests, the essay is a wide-ranging critique of the policies adopted under the DeSantis administration in Florida.Friedersdorf cited a recent DeSantis speech — “I don’t think you have a truly free state just because you have low taxes, low regulation, and no Covid restrictions, if the left is able to impose its agenda through the education system, through the business sphere, through all these others. A free state means you’re protecting your people from the left’s pathologies across the board” — which, Friedersdorf remarks, he would describe instead “as an anti-woke nanny state, not a state that values and protects freedom.”Friedersdorf does not, however, limit his critique to the conservative governor and quite likely presidential candidate, pointedly noting that in his own state of California, a Democratic bastion,Our dearth of freedom to build new dwellings has burdened us with punishing housing costs and immiserating homelessness. Our dearth of educational freedom consigns kids from poor families to failing schools. Our higher-than-average taxes do not yield better-than-average public services or assistance. And during the coronavirus pandemic, far from being a refuge of sanity, California responded with a lot of unscientific overzealousness, like the needless closure of beaches and parks.In practice, neither the left nor right has clean hands on the question of freedom.Conservative Republicans, including but not limited to DeSantis, have enacted restrictions on teaching about race and sex in public schools; have banned books in public libraries; barred cities from passing ordinances on the minimum wage, paid sick leave, firearms policy, plastic bags and marijuana decriminalization; and purposefully sought to suppress voting by minorities and college students.While certainly not equivalent, left-leaning students and faculty have led the charge in seeking to “cancel” professors and public figures who violate progressive orthodoxy, in disrupting conservative speakers on campuses and in seeking to bar or restrict teaching material considered hurtful or harmful to marginalized groups.Isabel V. Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, proposed in an email that Biden and the Democratic Party are well positioned to claim the freedom mantle:I want to suggest two reasons why this focus may not only be warranted but also have great appeal. The first is the battle over abortion rights. The second is the new attitude of Republicans toward the business community.On abortion, she continued, “I would argue that the ability to choose whether or not to have a child is a fundamental right,” adding her belief that:Before the Dobbs decision, we had found a workable compromise on this issue: no or limited abortions after fetal viability around 24 weeks. But the kind of six-week limit that is now the law in Florida and Georgia, not to mention the total ban in 14 other states, is an almost complete abrogation of the rights of women.On the treatment of business, Sawhill wrote: “Republicans have always been the party of corporate America, dedicated to limiting regulation and keeping taxes low. Gov. DeSantis’s attack on Disney and other so-called ‘woke’ companies is beginning to undermine the party’s reputation.”The bottom line, she concluded, was that “when Democrats talk about freedom, it’s not just rhetoric. There is substance behind the message.”Francis Fukuyama, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford, makes the case that the threats to freedom from the right are far more dangerous than those from the left.In an April 24 essay, “When Conservatives Used to be Liberals,” he argues that traditionally American conservatives differed from their European counterparts in “their emphasis on individual liberty, a small state, property rights and a vigorous private sector.” These principles, he continued, “defined the Republican Party under Ronald Reagan, which wanted lower taxes, deregulation, federalism and multiple limits on state power.”This understanding of conservatism, Fukuyama writes, “has been upended with the rise of Trumpist populism.”The result: “American conservatives are now talking more like older European ones,” older ones “like Spain’s Francisco Franco or Portugal’s Antonio Salazar, who were happy to see democracy abolished in their countries altogether.”Fukuyama acknowledged:There is plenty to criticize on the woke left, but this new type of conservative is not talking about rolling back particular policies; they are challenging the very premises of the liberal state and toying with outright authoritarianism. They are not simply deluded by lies about the 2020 election, but willing to accept nondemocratic outcomes to get their way.How, Fukuyama asks, could such a dire situation occur in this period of American history?The new illiberal conservatives talk about an “existential” crisis in American life: how the United States as traditionally understood will simply disappear under pressure from the woke left, which then justifies extreme measures in response.In fact, Fukuyama counters:It is hard to think of a time when the United States has been more free than it is in 2023. The much-feared tyranny of the woke left exists only in certain limited sectors of U.S. society — universities, Hollywood, and other cultural spaces, and it only touches on certain issues related to race, ethnicity, gender and sexual identity. It can be bad in these spaces, but most Americans don’t live there.Fukuyama is correct in citing the right’s exaggerated fears of the “woke” political agenda to justify authoritarian assaults on democracy, but he underestimates the adverse consequences of what many voters view as the freedom-threatening excesses of unrestrained liberalism.These include progressive policies that support the release of potentially violent criminals without bail; progressive prosecutors who refuse to press gun cases; the presence of homeless camps with open drug dealing on the sidewalks of Democratic cities; and the mentally ill roaming urban neighborhoods.For many voters, the consequences of these policies and situations are experienced as infringing on their own freedom to conduct their lives in a safe and secure environment, protected from crime, disease and harassment.Homelessness has become the subject of an ongoing debate over the meaning of freedom, a debate taking place now in New York City, where Mayor Eric Adams provoked angry protests — even before the chokehold death of a homeless man, Jordan Neely, by a passenger on an F train in Manhattan on May 1 — with his call to “involuntarily hospitalize people” who are a danger to themselves.In city centers large and small across the country, advocates for the homeless argue that street people without homes should be allowed to live and camp in public places, while others argue that the state should be empowered to close camps that allegedly pose threats to sanitation and public health — with no resolution in sight.William Galston, a senior fellow at Brookings, argues in a 2005 essay, “Taking Liberty,” that “for much of the 20th century, progressives took the lead in both defining freedom and advancing its borders.”From Teddy Roosevelt’s expansion of “the 19th-century laissez-faire conception of freedom to include the liberties of workers and entrepreneurs to get ahead in the world” to F.D.R.’s redefinition “to include social protection from the ills of want and fear,” to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s appeal to a “civil and political freedom that included all Americans,” Galston maintains that liberals have successfully argued that freedom often can “be advanced only through the vigorous actions of government.”Liberals began to lose command of freedom in the 1960s, Galston concludes:What began honorably in the early 1960s as the effort to expand freedom of speech and self-fulfillment was transformed just a decade later into an antinomian conception of freedom as liberation from all restraint. Enthusiasts could no longer distinguish between liberty and license, and so lost touch with the moral concerns of average citizens, especially parents struggling to raise their children in what they saw as a culture increasingly inhospitable to decency and self-restraint.“As progressives abandoned the discourse of freedom,” Galston writes, “conservatives were more than ready to claim it.”I asked Galston whether he stood by what he wrote 18 years ago. He replied by email:Mostly, but some of it is dated. I did not anticipate that a commitment to fairness and equality of results would morph into a culture of intolerance on college campuses and other areas where a critical mass of progressives has been reached.Looking toward Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024, there are conflicting signs favoring both left and right in the competition to determine which side is a more effective proponent of freedom.On the right, conservatives can point to two positive developments, both reflected in polls.The first was the May 7 ABC News/Washington Post survey that suggested Joe Biden is more vulnerable than previously recognized. Both Donald Trump and DeSantis led Biden — Trump by 45 percent to 38 percent, DeSantis by 42 percent to 37 percent.The second survey was a May 5 Washington Post-KFF poll showing that “Clear majorities of Americans support restrictions affecting transgender children” and “Most Americans (57 percent) don’t believe it’s even possible to be a gender that differs from that assigned at birth.”By nearly two-to-one margins, respondents said, “trans women and girls should not be allowed to compete in sports with other women and girls” — in high school sports, 66 percent to 34 percent, and in college sports, 65 percent to 34 percent.These data points are politically significant because Biden is a strong proponent of trans rights, committed to protecting the “fundamental rights and freedoms of trans Americans,” including challenges to state laws barring transgender students from “playing on sports teams” consistent with their gender identity.Conversely, there is no question that Republican state legislators and governors have initiated concerted attacks on freedoms supported by liberals, and that many of these freedoms have wide backing among the public at large.These attacks include book banning, opposed by at least four to one, and bans on abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy. A Wall Street Journal poll in September 2022 found that “62 percent opposed an abortion ban at 6 weeks of pregnancy that only included an exception for the health of the mother, and 57 percent opposed a ban at 15 weeks with an exception only for the health of the mother.”The outcome of the election will determine, at least for a brief period, the direction in which the nation is moving on freedom and liberty. Given the near parity between Republicans and Democrats, neither side appears to be equipped to inflict a knockout blow. But the ABC/Washington Post survey showing both Trump and DeSantis easily beating Biden is a clear warning signal to the Democratic Party and to liberals generally that they cannot — and should not — take anything for granted.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Why Trump Won’t Let Go of His Dream of Domination

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      Throughout his life — in his overlapping business, TV and political careers — Donald Trump has attempted to portray himself as what is conventionally known as an “alpha male.” But now he has run into a buzz saw of criminal investigations and civil suits that threaten to reveal both the ludicrousness of his self-image and his failure to meet the traditional standards of leadership.This does not diminish the seriousness of the threat he poses to American democracy.As both a candidate and as president, Trump has repeatedly made grandiose claims. Perhaps the best recent example came during his speech at a March 25 campaign rally in Waco, Texas: “I am your warrior, I am your justice,” Trump told his supporters. “For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard, described one way of looking at Trump in an email:Trump is a cartoon of an alpha-male wannabe, including the ruff of hair to exaggerate his height, his oversize phallic necktie, his defensiveness about the size of his hands and boast about the size of his genitals, his exaggeration of his height in his official biography, his looming behind Hillary Clinton during their presidential debate; his bizarre objection to her taking, like most of the other debate participants, a mid-debate break (“I know where she went — it’s disgusting, I don’t want to talk about it,” Trump said, “No, it’s too disgusting. Don’t say it, it’s disgusting”) and his hair-trigger reaction to sleights and challenges.Dan P. McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern, sees Trump a bit differently, writing by email:Trump’s behavior in office — from his aggressive morning tweets to the Cabinet meetings he held in which obsequious beta males, like the vice president and attorney general, engaged in elaborate rituals of submission in the presence of their alpha — mirrors closely the tactics of domination and intimidation exhibited by alpha chimps in chimpanzee colonies. More than any other American president in memory, and like Putin and Orban, Trump exhibits what evolutionary social psychologists call “dominance” leadership, which is an evolved tendency (tracing back at least 5-7 million years in human prehistory) to attain status and exert influence in groups through brute force and intimidation.Trump’s bid for dominance has never, however, produced majority support. His unfavorable ratings remained consistently higher than his favorable ratings throughout his presidency and afterward, according to RealClearPolitics, and remain so to this day.Let’s put this approach to the Trump phenomenon into a larger context, starting with the work of Amar Sarkar and Richard Wrangham, both of Harvard’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. Sarkar and Wrangham are the authors of the March article “Evolutionary and Neuroendocrine Foundations of Human Aggression.”“Socio-cognitive advances in the mid-Pleistocene (781,000 years to 126,000 years ago),” they write, “are hypothesized to have enabled lower-ranking males to form alliances that effectively controlled coercive alpha males.”Sarkar and Wrangham are describing the crucial evolutionary role of coalition formation to overcome the power of “coercive alpha males.” So-called sub-elite males, according to them, had the ability to form coalitions in order to inflict “capital punishment and targeted conspiratorial killing” that would overcome “individuals who persistently or egregiously violate social norms.”At that point, Sarkar and Wrangham observe that “a physically formidable coercive alpha male was nonetheless vulnerable to less formidable sub-elite males who possessed sufficient cognitive capacity to form an alliance to kill the alpha male.”Christopher Boehm, a cultural anthropologist at the University of Southern California, contended in his 2001 book, “Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior,” that these prehistoric developments are actually tracing “the roots of democracy.”Boehm’s main hypothesis is that “the collective weapon of the rank and file has been their ability to define their own social life in moral terms, and to back up their thoughts about political parity with pointed actions in the form of collectivized social sanctioning.”Boehm goes on: “The ‘democratic’ origins I describe are not recent and historical, but evolutionary and ancient. They date well back in the Paleolithic era and were intimately involved with the development of human nature itself.”In effect, Sarkar, Wrangham and Boehm are describing an early stage of what over time has become an essential ingredient of a civilized, ordered society: the acquisition by the state of police power and the legal use of force to enforce norms and laws.In an email, Sarkar put it this way: “Humans appear to have inherited the capacity to coordinate with one another to enact violence.” While chimpanzees also demonstrate this capacity, according to Sarkar, “one factor that contributes to the uniqueness of human violence is the ability to use language, which allows individuals to freely share thoughts and intentions with one another and to form remarkably precise plans. This means that humans are able to engage in much higher levels of coordination in planning and performing aggression.”Sarkar added that it is “very difficult — or impossible — to connect the evolutionary origins of aggression to contemporary political events.”In their article, Sarkar and Wrangham continue the argument:For coalitionary proactive aggression against a formidable alpha male to be adaptive, it was critical for sub-elite males to ensure that their alliance was stable and that the execution could be performed at minimal risk to alliance members. Only then could they act safely without retribution from the alpha male or his sycophants.This shift of authority and control away from abusive, domineering individual males to collective groups of less powerful men and women had substantial consequences for the composition of society, then and now:Alpha alliances of sub-elite males could kill coercive alpha males, drastically reducing the reproductive success of coercive alpha males. Such control would also have signaled the limits of acceptable intragroup aggression. The direction of selection on male aggression thus changed as a result: rather than selection favoring coercive behavior that males used to achieve and maintain alpha status, the actions of alpha alliances ensured that selection acted against it. Simultaneously, the necessity of coordination and cooperation for targeted conspiratorial killing of alpha males meant that selection favored proactive aggression, and especially coalitionary proactive aggression.The result: “Individual alpha males were thus replaced by alpha alliances of subelite males.”In a separate 2019 article, Wrangham argues:The explanation that best accounts for a novel selection pressure leading to a reduction in reactive aggression starting around 300,000 years ago is the emergence of collective intentionality in the form of language-based conspiracy. The evolution of this newly sophisticated cognitive ability would have led subordinates to socially select against aggressive fighters, creating a reverse dominance hierarchy. The spread of the new style of hierarchy could have occurred by individual learning or by selection of group-cultures, and would have paved the way for diverse selection pressures to additionally influence the evolution of the characteristically human social traits.Where does all this fit in with the state of politics today?The barrage of criminal investigations and civil suits against Trump is, in many respects, the sophisticated and complex way America’s democratic system of government has developed to constrain an ominous, and even somewhat delusional, deregulated “alpha-male wannabe.”Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at N.Y.U.’s Stern School of Business, describes Trump in an email as “a unique case. He is a narcissist. He is not hungry for power. He wants attention and praise. So he has some alpha male traits, certainly, but he is not prototypical.”In his book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,” Haidt cites Boehm while making the case that the early acquisition of weaponry played a crucial role in the democratization of authority within groups of humans:Imagine early hominid life as a tense balance of power between alpha males (and an ally or two) and the larger set of males who are shut out of power. Then arm everyone with spears. The balance of power is likely to shift when physical strength no longer decides the outcome of every fight. That’s essentially what happened, Boehm suggests, as our ancestors developed better weapons for hunting and butchering.Once early humans had developed spears, Haidt continues,anyone could kill a bullying alpha male. And if you add the ability to communicate with language and note that every human society uses language to gossip about moral violations, then it becomes easy to see how early humans developed the ability to unite in order to shame, ostracize, or kill anyone whose behavior threatened or simply annoyed the rest of the group.Over time, the aversion to bullying males developed into what Haidt calls “the liberty/oppression moral foundation,” which, he proposes,evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of living in small groups with individuals who would, if given the chance, dominate, bully, and constrain others. Anything that suggests the aggressive, controlling behavior of an alpha male (or female) can trigger this form of righteous anger, which is sometimes called reactance.The liberty foundation, Haidt goes on to say,supports the moral matrix of revolutionaries and “freedom fighters” everywhere. The American Declaration of Independence is a long enumeration of “repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of absolute tyranny over these states.” The document begins with the claim that “all men are created equal” and ends with a stirring pledge of unity: “We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”Pinker argued by email that over the long haul,History has seen the invention of increasingly complex systems that limit the power of the leader, such as coalitions (as per Sarkar and Wrangham), power-sharing or turn-taking agreements, parliaments, constitutions, and rule-governed bureaucracies. Our leader is called a “president” because he merely presides over the government, rather than ruling over it.But, Pinker cautioned,We’re always in danger of slipping back into the dynamic of dominance. In democracies, voters, on average, favor the taller candidate and often crave a “strong leader.” Presidents and prime ministers, for their part, often arrogate more power than the constitution allows. The system of laws that constrains the leader’s power is often tested to its limits, and in countries that are not democracies, their only hope may be what Sarkar and Wrangham call an “alpha coalition,” namely the coup-plotters that many of us hope might someday depose Putin.Rose McDermott, a professor of international relations at Brown whose research has focused in part on the biological and genetic bases of political behavior, provided further explanation in an email: “Humans show self-domestication over time — they become more peaceful — and that may seem like it is not true in light of all the violence in the world, but relative to the death rates in earlier hunter-gatherer kinds of nomadic communities, it is true.”This process of self-domestication, she continued,happens as groups of beta and gamma males (the less strong ones) work together to unseat alphas who exploit the community. They might ostracize him (the alpha male) but mostly they assassinate him. What that means is that slowly over time you get more egalitarian dynamics (such as the birth of democracy, for example).In the case of the former president, McDermott wrote:Trump is a poster child for a “coercive alpha male” and frankly I have been surprised that more Republicans don’t try to take him on directly. I think part of it is that other potential Republican leaders are so narcissistic that they cannot band together in the kind of coalition that historically would have brought down a leader like this in one way or another. This depends on coalitional dynamics: men working together in cooperation, not against each other.Democratic norms, according to McDermott,are one way the country has tried to constrain the negative effects of Trump through things like rule of law and elections (Biden won in 2020). But they have not been as strong as many would like or hope for, and I agree that this is partly (although not entirely) related to increasing polarization (i.e. the inability to form strong united coalitional bonds).As far as “coercive alpha males” go, Trump is a bully, as demonstrated by his treatment both of competitors for the nomination in 2016 and of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida now; he boasts of his predatory sexual activity; and he lacks empathy, as reflected in his policies separating the children of detained immigrants from their parents at the border.As the same time, Trump has a long and detailed history of violating the fundamental obligations of a true leader. He is both unreliable and a liar, repeatedly failing to pay bills for services, products and construction; defrauding students who paid to learn about real estate; distorting the truth repeatedly and extensively, about everything from President Barack Obama’s place of birth to the size of his inauguration crowd all the way on through to the results of the 2020 election; promising to “drain the swamp” only to preside over an administration rife with self-dealing.On top of all that, Trump is often simply preposterous, more a late-night TV subject of ridicule, lacking character and the observable qualities of a credible leader, crude more than calculating, a con artist, huckster and hustler.Even so, there are a large number of people who are not persuaded by Wrangham’s line of thinking. John Horgan, a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology, where he serves as director of the Stevens Center for Science Writings, emailed his response to my inquiry:I have a meta-objection to Wrangham’s use of biology to explain modern social behavior. It’s far too deterministic, it lets us off the hook, it reduces our autonomy. When Wrangham’s ideas seep into popular culture, they feed into peoples’ fatalism about hierarchies, inequality and militarism.R. Brian Ferguson, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers, responded to my inquiry regarding the Sarkar-Wrangham paper by first acknowledging:I come from a very critical position. One foundational difference in perspectives is that my new book, “Chimpanzees, War and History: Are Men Born to Kill?” is intended to refute current primatological consensus that chimpanzees have evolved propensities to “proactively” kill neighbors.Ferguson continued:I have been deeply involved in understanding war, conflict, and politics in tribal societies, and I do not recognize anything like their idea of alphas facing death because of sub-alpha elite coalitions, except in the notable category of segmental tributary chiefdoms and states, where there are rivals near the top ready to rebel, and usually then take over.McAdams, the professor of psychology at Northwestern, does not share Horgan and Ferguson’s doubts about Wrangham. In an essay written in the first year of the Trump presidency, “The Appeal of the Primal Leader: Human Evolution and Donald J. Trump,” Ferguson argued along lines similar to Pinker’s:If angry extraversion and disagreeableness characterize his temperament style, narcissism captures Trump’s underlying motivational agenda. Although some dominant leaders subscribe to an overarching set of values and goals, Trump has no political philosophy to speak of, and his central goal in life is, and always has been, to promote himself. In Trump’s case, narcissism seems to play well with the authoritarian dynamic.Trump, McAdams continues, “harkens back to an older evolutionarily paradigm for achieving status in primate groups. It is the paradigm of brute dominance, an atavistic proclivity whose primal appeal never seems to fade.”Why, McAdams asks, “did 63 million Americans elect a president of the United States who was repeatedly described during the campaign, by both Democrats and Republicans, as a serial liar, a sexual predator, a swindler, a narcissist and a bully?”He answers:No U.S. president in recent memory, and perhaps none ever, has tapped so effectively into the primal psychology of dominance. None has so effectively cultivated an authoritarian dynamic with his followers.In addition, according to McAdams:Trump’s unique personality profile — the high extraversion and low agreeableness, the narcissistic motivations, the “warrior” life story — seems perfectly suited to assume the authoritarian mantle at a time in American history when many Americans crave the security and exult in the excitement that such a mantle seems to confer. Even as he creates chaos, Donald Trump — as president of the United States — confidently assured Americans that he would deliver them from chaos. We will be standing safe and strong in the end. We will win. We will dominate.To some, Trump is less a cause than a symptom of the pervasive contemporary undermining of the American commitment to democratic values.Kevin Smith, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska, argued by email that there is no doubt that there has been a weakening of democratic norms and that this erosionhas loosened the constraints on what counts as behavioral red lines for political leaders. This is almost certainly true for “coercive alpha males,” but I think it is broader than that. As those norms decay there is simply more room available for a range of personalities to get their swagger on in the political arena, as it were, aggressively and openly seeking power to aggrandize themselves and punish those who stand in the way.Smith pointed out that there are no “gender limits here (think of Marjorie Taylor Greene).” In addition, in Smith’s view, the issue goes to the heart of “the corroding of what’s considered beyond the behavioral pale.”In a large heterogeneous republic like ours, Smith wrote, “it is not easy, it is not just a matter of having clear rules or laws, but establishing broad acceptance and respect for the process, something more in the realm of custom, tradition or folk intuition.” But “once established, those norms can help insulate democratic systems from what otherwise is a natural vulnerability to demagogues and tyrants.”Those norms, Smith continued,are incredibly hard to institutionalize, but unfortunately apparently much easier to destroy. And once they are gone they may be incredibly hard to re-establish. If that’s correct, then the end result may be a political system that is indeed more open to shocks of unconstrained “coercive alpha male behavior,” but also to unprincipled behavior among political elites more generally. If there are few costs and clear benefits to such behavior, what’s the argument for not seeking power solely to benefit you and yours and to heck with everybody else?The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      At This Museum Sixth Graders Learn Lessons in Democracy

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      One issue at the New-York Historical Society’s democracy program: weekly tests and no homework vs. no tests and daily homework. The final vote may surprise you.This article is part of our Museums special section about how art institutions are reaching out to new artists and attracting new audiences.Feelings were running high as everyone lobbied their representatives. The constituents had only a few minutes to make their arguments, and it seemed no one was listening. At one point, someone tried to unseat a delegate.This was politics at work at the New-York Historical Society’s democracy program, with 21 sixth graders from Middle School 244 in the Bronx.The setting was the museum’s Skylight Gallery. The question at hand, relayed by Emily Bumgardner, a museum educator, was this: Given the choice between weekly tests and no homework or daily homework and no tests, what would the students opt for?Asher Kolman, left, and Emily Bumgardner, museum educators, wearing togas to embrace the spirit of ancient Greece.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesThe voters were quickly separated into groups of four.Valerie Decena and Lixander Delacruz, both 12, argued heatedly; Valerie preferred homework, saying it meant less stress. Lixander wanted tests, saying it meant less work.“I don’t like tests or homework,” complained Miranda Nuñez Polanco, also 12.It was passionate, confusing and at times contradictory. There were those who felt their voices weren’t heard, some who didn’t like any of the options and a few who thought the system worked just fine.In other words, it was much like policymaking in the real world.Welcome to the Tang Academy for American Democracy, a free program — including transportation — offered by the historical society, primarily to fifth- and sixth-grade New York City public school students.Lixander Delacruz, left, and Valerie Decena debate the merits of testing versus homeworkKarsten Moran for The New York TimesThe four-day, four-hour program attempts to answer “three big questions,” said Leah Charles-Edouard, associate director of school programs for the museum. “What is democracy? How does it work? And how do we make change in a democracy?”It includes mini-lessons and activities emphasizing ancient Athens and the colonial United States, as well as modern-day activism, integrated with the museum’s exhibitions.“What really motivated us to do this program was looking at statistics on the percentage of young people that voted in the 2016 election,” said Louise Mirrer, the museum’s president and chief executive. Many said “that democracy really didn’t matter to them very much — they didn’t really care whether they lived in democracy or not. And those numbers seem to be rising.” The issue is especially timely, given the challenges to democracy around the globe.The program started in 2019, went online during the pandemic and resumed in-person in 2021, she added.There are now three versions: on-site, online for students all over the country, and in the schools, taught by museum educators, Ms. Charles-Edouard said. The museum also offers professional development for teachers to use the curriculum in their classes.Since 2021, almost 6,000 students have taken part in the academy.Typically, such a program would be aimed at high school students, who are closer to voting age, but museum officials chose younger students because research shows that it’s often in fifth or sixth grade “when kids decide to get into school or hate school forever,” Ms. Charles-Edouard said.So far, 75 sixth graders from M.S. 244, also known as the New School for Leadership and the Arts, have attended the academy.For the 21 students from Stephen Dowd’s social studies class, who participated in late March, the second day came with togas.About a quarter of the students donned them over their clothes, ready to embrace the spirit of ancient Greece. Others, like Isaiah Fernandez, 12, weren’t interested.“It’s not my style,” he said.Lixander and Mr. Kolman work on their toga wardrobe.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesAsher Kolman, the other museum educator teaching the class, laid out a quandary: Greece is at war, and there’s not enough money for both the arts and sports, so the students have to vote on which to keep.Kelvin Garcia, a toga over his hoodie, asked, “What will music and painting help them when it comes to a war?” And won’t they need sports to keep fit? he wondered.“Interesting,” Mr. Kolman responded, noting that music may “make people living in Athens less anxious.” He added, “Or maybe it means that people are in a better mood or mental state when they go to war.”When it was time for the vote, sports won.“I love music and sports,” Miranda said. “I want to be a singer and a dancer, but I always love basketball. I voted for music, but sports won because the boys really wanted sports.”Making the decision, she said, “is harder than I thought.”The students, some wearing togas, vote with a show of hands.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesAfter performing their civic duty, the students received a brief lesson on how democracy doesn’t necessarily mean everyone gets to participate. In ancient Athens, Mr. Kolman noted, only 10 percent of the people actually had the right to vote — women, nonnative Athenians and enslaved people were excluded.To illustrate how small 10 percent was, he passed out Popsicle sticks. Two were marked green. Only those students with the green sticks — out of the whole class — could actually vote.After a break for granola bars, the students returned to learn about representational democracy.The student Miranda Nuñez Polanco in the museum’s re-creation of the Oval Office.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesOn the way to their second vote, the class stopped at one of the permanent exhibits. When asked if they knew what it was, Kelvin shouted out, “Barack Obama’s office!”More specifically, the Oval Office, with a jar of jelly beans representing the Reagan era. They were then invited to sit in the chair behind the Resolute Desk. At first the boys rushed in, then some girls worked up their courage. Miranda said that maybe after a career as a dancer, she would run for president.Then came the homework versus test vote. Of the five representatives, four voted for tests — despite Valerie’s intense lobbying — and one for homework.But Isaiah’s constituents weren’t happy. They had sent him to vote for homework, but he had followed his colleagues and approved tests.“I was confused,” Isaiah said.Politics, right?Because the students have about six years before they’re eligible to vote, “we couldn’t just finish this with OK, go vote,” said Allyson Schettino, the museum’s director of curriculum and instruction.“So, our final days are teaching them about ways to participate in a democracy when you can’t vote,” she said.Rainer Valentin and other students finish the day with a slogan and printmaking exercise.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesRainer’s slogan “Your Voice = Power” hangs from a wall.Karsten Moran for The New York Times“We look at examples from the civil rights movement, from the Chinese exclusion resistance movement, Indigenous activists in the United States, and we look at how they march, how they petition, give speeches. We’re trying to ask, ‘What can we do to make sure we’re improving our American system?’”A new wing, scheduled to be completed in 2026, will allow the museum to serve thousands more New York public school students and their teachers annually through the Tang Academy for American Democracy, Dr. Mirrer said.At the end of the lessons, the students practiced printmaking in the lead-up to the final day, where they would make posters.Rainer Valentin, 11, chose to write, “Your Voice = Power.” He wasn’t familiar with what democracy was before the academy, he said, and “I’m still learning about it.”Asked if he would now urge people he knew to vote, he said: “It would depend on why they don’t vote. If they say it’s because they don’t want to, I would say you have to. Your voice equals power.” More

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      This Philosopher Wants Liberals to Take Political Power Seriously

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      America today faces a crisis of governance. In the face of numerous challenges — from climate change, to housing shortages, to pandemics — our institutions struggle to act quickly and decisively. Democratic processes often get captured by special interests or paralyzed by polarization. And, in response, public faith in government has reached a new low.For the political philosopher Danielle Allen, this crisis requires a complete transformation of our democratic institutions. “Representation as designed cannot work under current conditions,” she writes. “We have no choice but to undertake a significant project of democracy renovation.” Allen’s most recent book — “Justice By Means of Democracy” — puts forth a sweeping vision of what she calls “power-sharing liberalism,” which aims to place political equality, power and participation at the center of liberal thinking.[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]But Allen isn’t just a theorist of liberal governance; she’s actively applying her insights in the real world. As the director of Harvard’s Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics, she’s convened interdisciplinary groups to tackle a range of challenges from building Covid-19 testing infrastructure to innovating in A.I. governance. She was co-chair of the “Our Common Purpose” commission, which put forward over 30 specific policy recommendations for reinventing American democracy. She even ran for governor of Massachusetts.So this is a conversation about what it would mean to build a better, more responsive and inclusive government — and the numerous challenges standing in the way of doing that. Along the way, we discuss liberals’ failure to take power seriously, Colorado’s experiments with “plural voting,” Seattle’s efforts to publicly finance elections through “democracy bucks,” Taiwan’s groundbreaking innovations in deliberative democracy, whether most citizens actually want deeper participation in government — or just better results from it, what it would mean to democratically govern AI development and much more.You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Courtesy of Danielle AllenThis episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Jeff Geld, Kristin Lin, and Roge Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski. More

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      The Republican Strategists Who Have Carefully Planned All of This

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      Republican leaders are now adopting increasingly autocratic measures, using the police powers of government to impose moralized regulations, turning private citizens into enforcement officers and expelling defiant elected Democrats just as county Republican parties, particularly in western states, are electing militia members, Christian nationalists and QAnon believers to key posts.Here’s one example. Last November, the Republican Party of Clackamas County in Oregon chose a new vice chairman, Daniel Tooze, a Proud Boy from Oregon City, and Rick Riley, head of the county chapter of Take Back America, which denies the results of the 2020 presidential election, as chairman. Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that in central Oregon’s Deschutes County, the local Republican Party chose Scott Stuart, “a member of the county chapter of People’s Rights, a nationwide network of militia groups and anti-government activists founded by conservative firebrand Ammon Bundy.”In June 2022, two of my Times colleagues, Patricia Mazzei and Alan Feuer, reported that “at least a half-dozen current and former Proud Boys” had secured seats on the Miami-Dade Republican Executive Committee, including two facing criminal charges for participation in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol:The concerted effort by the Proud Boys to join the leadership of the party — and, in some cases, run for local office — has destabilized and dramatically reshaped the Miami-Dade Republican Party that former Gov. Jeb Bush and others built into a powerhouse nearly four decades ago, transforming it from an archetype of the strait-laced establishment to an organization roiled by internal conflict as it wrestles with forces pulling it to the hard right.“On the right, support for violence is no longer a fringe position,” Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow in the Democracy, Conflict and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in a November 2022 Politico essay, “How Political Violence Went Mainstream on the Right.”Those joining violent political events like the Jan. 6 insurrection, Kleinfeld continued,are more likely to be married middle-aged men with jobs and kids. Those most likely to support violence on the right feel most connected to the Republican Party. This is not a marginal movement: It is people who see violence as a means to defend their values, an extension of their political activity.Democrats are not driving today’s political violence, Kleinfeld argued,but they are at least partly responsible for driving many people into the arms of the far right. Fear is a major cause of violence. As America undergoes immense change, from a fourth industrial revolution to remaking the concept of gender, many Americans are struggling to understand why they feel unmoored, anxious and behind. Snake-oil salesmen like Tucker Carlson offer the racist Great Replacement Theory as an explanation. Rather than provide a better story, the progressive left calls people names if they can’t march to a radically new tune fast enough. No wonder that even people of color moved in 2020 toward a right that offers understanding and a sense of community.At the same time, Republican leaders are showing a growing willingness to disempower both Democratic officials and cities run by Democrats if they defy Republican-endorsed policies on matters as diverse as immigration, abortion and gun control.The expulsion of two Black state representatives by the Republican majority in Tennessee received widespread publicity this past week (one has already been reinstated by local officials and the other may be soon). But their expulsion, as spectacular as it was, is just the most recent development in a pattern of attempts by Republicans to fire or limit the powers of elected Democrats in Florida, Mississippi, Georgia and elsewhere. This includes Gov. Ron DeSantis’s decision in August 2022 to suspend Andrew H. Warren, the elected Democratic state attorney of Hillsborough County, who had signed a statement saying he would not prosecute those who seek or provide abortions.In defiance of public opinion, 22 Republican attorneys general and 67 Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives filed amicus briefs that called on Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Federal District Court judge in Amarillo, Texas, to invalidate the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, which Kacsmaryk promptly went ahead and did last week. A February Ispos poll found that by a 3 to 1 margin (65-21), American adults agree that “medication abortion should remain legal in the United States,” including a healthy plurality (49-35) of Republicans.Republicans in states across the country are defiantly pushing for the criminalization of abortion — of the procedure, of abortifacient drugs and of those who travel out of state to terminate pregnancy — despite clear evidence, in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, that public opinion had shifted in favor of abortion rights.According to research provided to The Times by the Kaiser Family Foundation, states that have abortion bans at various early stages of pregnancy with no exception for rape or incest include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin.An overwhelming majority of Americans of all political persuasions believe there should be exceptions for rape and incest. An October 2022 survey of 21,730 people by the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies found overall support for these exceptions at 86-14; among Democrats at 94-6; among independents at 89-12; and among Republicans at 76-24.At least three states with Republican governors — Florida, Virginia and Texas — have adopted laws or regulations empowering private citizens to enforce restrictive policies governing abortion, sex education or the teaching of critical race theory, in some cases providing bounties for those reporting abortions.Jacob Grumbach, a political scientist at the University of Washington, argues in his 2022 book, “Laboratories Against Democracy”:When it comes to democratic backsliding in the states, the results couldn’t be clearer: over the past two decades, the Republican Party has eroded democracy in states under its control. Republican governments have gerrymandered districts, made it more difficult to vote and restricted civil liberties to a degree unprecedented since the civil rights era. It is not local changes in state-level polarization, competition or demographics driving these major changes in the rules of American democracy. Instead, it is the groups that make up the national coalition of the modern G.O.P. — the very wealthy on the one hand and those motivated by white identity politics and cultural resentment on the other.When I asked him why the Republican Party had moved in this direction over the past generation, Grumbach elaborated in an email, observing that the two major elements of the Republican Party — “extremely wealthy individuals in an era of high economic inequality” and “a voter base motivated by cultural and demographic threat” — have a “hard time winning electoral majorities on the basis of their policy agendas (a high-end tax cut agenda for the elite base and a culturally reactionary agenda for the electoral base), which increases their incentive to tweak the rules of the game to their advantage.”Pippa Norris, a political scientist at Harvard’s Kennedy School, argued in an email that contemporary cultural conservatism depends on support from declining constituencies — non-college whites (as pollsters put it), evangelical Christians and other ideologues on the right — which places these groups in an increasingly threatened position, especially in the American two-party system.“At a certain point, the arc of history, which bends toward liberalism, means that traditional values among social conservatives lose their hegemonic status,” Norris wrote, which “is eventually reflected in progressive changes in the public policy agenda evident in many postindustrial societies during the late twentieth century, from the spread of reproductive rights, equal pay for women and men, anti-sex discrimination laws, passage of same-sex marriage laws, support for the international rules-based world order based on liberal democracy, free trade, and human rights, and concern about protection against environmental and climate change.”The consequences of this long-term cultural development for the losers, Norris continued, is a buildup of “resentment at the loss of the hegemony of traditional values and identities.” The problem for the Republican Party, she observed, lies in the fact that “by appealing to their shrinking socially conservative base, the Republican Party has been unable to gain a majority of the popular vote in their bid for the White House in eight of the last nine presidential elections.”The reality, Norris wrote, is:Since the early 1980s, on issue after issue, from abortion, secular values, civil rights, racial, homosexual, and gender equality, gun control, cosmopolitanism, and environmentalism, the pool of social conservatives adopting traditional views on these moral and social identity issues has been shrinking in size within the U.S. national electorate, from majority to minority status. They are running down an up escalator.With their backs to the wall, Norris argued, conservatives have capitalized oninstitutional features of U.S. elections that allow Republicans to seek to dismantle checks on executive power — including the extreme decentralization of electoral administration to partisan officials with minimal federal regulation, partisan gerrymandering of districts, overrepresentation of rural states in the U.S. Senate and Electoral College, partisan appointments in the judiciary, primary elections rallying the faithful in the base but excluding the less mobilized moderate independents, the role of money from rich donors in elections and campaigns, and so on and so forth. The Trump presidency exacerbated these developments, but their roots are far deeper and more enduring.Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a law professor at Harvard, noted in an email “that state policy outcomes are becoming more bimodal” — liberal or conservative, rather than centrist — “than in previous eras” and that the “misalignment between public policy and public opinion is pervasive in modern American politics,” particularly in red states “where public policy is far more extreme and conservative than the public wants.”In theory, the hostility of average voters to extreme issue stances can pressure politicians to move toward the center, Stephanopoulos contended, “but this aligning impact of general elections can be reduced through tactics like gerrymandering, which make it unlikely that even large swings in public opinion will much alter the composition of the legislature.”In addition, in Stephanopoulos’s view, in a highly polarized era, the pressure to moderate in order to win general elections faces growing counter-pressure to take immoderate positions in order to win primaries:There’s little that could persuade many voters to ever support the other side. And while general elections might be aligning, they’re pitted against many misaligning forces: the views of activists and donors, the need to win the primary election to be re-elected, pressure from legislative leadership, politicians’ own often extreme ideologies, and so on. It’s no surprise that the misaligning forces are often stronger.Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, made the argument by email that “Given the clustering of communities along political, cultural, and social lines in the United States presently and the dispersion of powers in American federalism, we should expect our state and local laboratories to yield a wide dispersion of products, especially when they are given more freedom to experiment.”So why don’t all states converge on the national median, as revealed by the polls? Cain asked, and answered that “There are real public opinion differences across states and local communities, especially on hot button social issues.”Ultimately, Cain continued, “If elected officials and judges get too far out of alignment with voters, they will get the message in the form of surprising electoral outcomes, as recently occurred in Wisconsin. Democrats in the seventies and eighties experienced the same on busing, crime and welfare.”Of course, Cain cautioned, “my optimism about this assumes the Republicans do not give up on elections altogether, which is more in doubt than I ever anticipated a decade ago.”Other observers of American politics are more pessimistic. Theda Skocpol, a professor of political science and sociology at Harvard, contends that many of the developments in states controlled by Republicans are a result of careful, long-term planning by conservative strategists, particularly those in the Federalist Society, who are developing tools to build what she calls “minority authoritarianism” within the context of a nominally democratic system of government.Skocpol outlined her thinking in an email:The first-movers who figured out how to configure this new “laboratory of democratic constriction” were legal eagles in the Federalist Society and beyond, because the key structural dynamic in the current G.O.P. gallop toward minority authoritarianism is the mutual interlock between post-2010 Republican control, often supermajority control, of dozens of state legislatures and the Scotus decision in 2019 to allow even the most extreme and bizarre forms of partisan gerrymandering.These organized, richly resourced actors, she wrote,have figured out how to rig the current U.S. system of federalism and divided branches, given generational and geographic realities on the ground, and the in many ways fluky 2016 presidential election gave them what they needed to put the interlock in place. They are stoking and using the fears and resentments of about half or so of the G.O.P. popular base to undo American democracy and enhance their own power and privileges. They are doing it because they can, and they believe in what they are doing. They are America’s G.O.P. Leninists.Skocpol does not pull her punches:This situation, locked in place by a corruptly installed Supreme Court majority and by many rotten-borough judicial districts like the one in Amarillo, means that minority authoritarians, behind a bare facade of “constitutionalism,” can render majority-elected officials, including the president and many governors, officials in name only. The great thing from the minority authoritarian point of view is that those visible chief executives (and urban mayors and district attorneys) can still be blamed for government non-function and societal problems, but they cannot address them with even broadly supported measures (such as simple background checks for having military assault weapons).There are a number of factors that confirm Skocpol’s analysis.First and foremost, the Republican Party’s commitment to democratic values and procedures has been steadily eroding over the past two decades — and the momentum has accelerated. The brakes on extremism are failing, with Donald Trump gaining strength in his bid for renomination and the continuing shift to the right in states like Tennessee and Ohio.Second, in bright-red states, the embrace of far-right positions on such issues as abortion, guns, immigration and election denial is now a requirement rather than a choice for candidates seeking office. At the same time, in purple states like Arizona and Pennsylvania, a hard-right posture may be a liability in the general election, even as it is often mandatory in a primary contest.The 2024 presidential election, if it is close, will test the viability of a mainstay of Republicans’ current anti-democratic strategy: a drive to empower state legislatures to overturn election results. In August 2021, ABC News reported that eight states have enacted legislation shifting power over determining election results to legislatures or partisan boards: Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Florida, Arkansas, Kansas, Montana and Kentucky.The ability of state legislatures to determine the winners and losers of elections now hangs on the outcome of a pending Supreme Court case, Moore v. Harper, which will determine the constitutionality of a fringe legal theory promulgated by the right, the so-called independent state legislature doctrine.What’s at stake?In a 2021 essay, “Trump Is Planning a Much More Respectable Coup Next Time,” Richard Hasen, an election expert who is a law professor at U.C.L.A., wrote:A state legislature dominated by Republicans in a state won by Democrats could simply meet and declare that local administrators or courts have deviated from the legislature’s own rules, and therefore the legislature will take matters into its own hands and choose its own slate of electors.Put another way, according to Hasen:The Jan. 6 insurrection, and Trump’s actions trying to change the Electoral College votes in five states, was an attempted coup built on the Big Lie of voter fraud. But the potential coup next time will come in neatly filed legal briefs and arguments quoting Thomas Jefferson and wrapped in ancient precedents and purported constitutional textualism. It will be no less pernicious.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Biden’s Defense of Global Democracies Is Tested by Political Turmoil

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      The administration’s Summit for Democracy begins this week amid crises in several countries allied with the United States, including Israel.WASHINGTON — A political crisis in Israel and setbacks to democracy in several other major countries closely allied with the United States are testing the Biden administration’s defense of democracy against a global trend toward the authoritarianism of nations like Russia and China.President Biden will deliver remarks on Wednesday at the second White House-led Summit for Democracy, which Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken kicked off on Tuesday morning.The three-day, in-person and virtual event comes as Mr. Biden has boasted, more than once, that since he became president “democracies have become stronger, not weaker. Autocracies have grown weaker, not stronger.”Casting a cloud over the long-planned gathering is a move by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government to weaken the power of Israel’s judiciary, a plan that his opponents call an existential threat to the country’s 75-year democratic tradition.But that is only the most vivid sign of how autocratic practices are making inroads around the world.Proposed changes to Israel’s judiciary have starkly divided society and ignited huge protests this week.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesBiden administration officials are also warily eyeing countries like Mexico, which has moved to gut its election oversight body; India, where a top opposition political leader was disqualified last week from holding a post in Parliament; and Brazil, where the electoral defeat last year of the autocratic president, Jair Bolsonaro, was followed by a riot in January that his supporters orchestrated at government offices in Brasília, the capital.Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to postpone the proposed judicial changes under intense political pressure may slightly ease the awkwardness of Israel’s participation in the summit, where he is set to deliver prerecorded video remarks. Mexico, India and Brazil will also participate.Mr. Netanyahu’s retreat came after private admonitions from Biden officials that he was endangering Israel’s cherished reputation as a true democracy in the heart of the Middle East.In a briefing for reporters on Monday, John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, said that Mr. Biden had “strongly” urged Israel’s government to find a compromise to a judicial plan that has starkly divided society and ignited huge protests. Asked whether the White House might disinvite Israel from the summit, Mr. Kirby said only that Israel “has been invited.”But the larger troubles remain for Mr. Biden, who asserted in his State of the Union address last month that the United States had reach “an inflection point” in history and that during his presidency had begun to reverse a worldwide autocratic march.Democracy activists call that a debatable proposition, and U.S. officials acknowledge that the picture is nuanced at best.On the positive side of the ledger, U.S. officials and experts say, Mr. Biden has rallied much of the democratic world into a powerful coalition against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In a speech during his visit to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, last month marking the anniversary of the invasion, Mr. Biden repeated his assertion about the growing strength of democracies against autocracies and said that the war had forced the United States and its allies to “stand up for democracy.”Damage in Siversk, Ukraine, this month. U.S. officials and experts say Mr. Biden has rallied much of the democratic world into a powerful coalition against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesMr. Biden has also rallied democratic nations to take firmer stands against Chinese influence around the world at a time when experts say Beijing is looking to export its model of governance.And some argue that Mr. Biden has been a savior of democracy by winning the 2020 presidential election — defeating President Donald J. Trump, a U.S. leader with authoritarian tendencies — and by containing for now Mr. Trump’s efforts to reject the results of that election and myriad other democratic norms.“Without suggesting that the fight has been won, or that Biden is doing everything right, I think we need to give him credit for helping to save American democracy and standing up to the great authoritarian powers,” said Tom Malinowski, a former Democratic congressman from New Jersey.But Mr. Biden’s claim that autocracies have grown weaker faces a stark reality in some nations.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia may find himself economically isolated and militarily challenged in Ukraine. But he still has strong political support in Russia and has even consolidated power through a crackdown on dissent that has driven hundreds of thousands of Russians from the country.In Beijing, Xi Jinping was awarded a third five-year term this month not long after suppressing protests against his government’s coronavirus policies. In its latest official worldwide threat assessment, the U.S. intelligence community found that arms of the Chinese Communist Party “have become more aggressive with their influence campaigns” against the United States and other countries.President Xi Jinping of China was awarded a third five-year term this month not long after suppressing protests against his government’s coronavirus policies. Wu Hao/EPA, via ShutterstockBiden officials conceived a democracy summit during the 2020 campaign to address a belief that autocratic influence had been spreading for years, destabilizing and undermining Western governments. They also worried about a growing perception that political chaos and legislative paralysis in places like Washington and London — or in Israel, which held five elections in three years before Mr. Netanyahu narrowly managed to form his coalition — was creating a sense around the world that democracies could not deliver results for their people.Mr. Biden’s first Summit for Democracy, in December 2021, featured uplifting language from world leaders and group sessions on issues like media freedom and rule of law in which countries could trade best practices on strengthening their democracies and share advice on countering foreign efforts to manipulate politics and elections.The summit this week will include about 120 countries and will be hosted by Costa Rica, the Netherlands, South Korea and Zambia in addition to the United States.Recent democratic trends can be described as mixed at best. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual democracy index found last year that in 2021, the first year of Mr. Biden’s presidency, “global democracy continued its precipitous decline.” More recently, the same survey found that in 2022, democracy had “stagnated.”Mr. Biden hosted a Summit for Democracy from the White House in 2021.Doug Mills/The New York TimesSimilarly, a report released this month by Freedom House, a nonprofit group that monitors democracy, human rights and civil liberties around the world, found that global freedom had slipped for the 17th year in a row, by its measurement. But the group also reported that the steady decline might have plateaued and that there were just slightly more countries showing a decrease in freedoms compared with those whose records were improving.“This seems like a critical moment,” said Yana Gorokhovskaia, an author of the Freedom House report. “The spread of decline is clearly slowing. It hasn’t stopped.”That has been clear in some countries. Last month, Mexican lawmakers passed sweeping legislation hobbling the election oversight body that is widely credited with steering the country from decades of one-party rule. Critics say the country’s populist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has shown some troubling autocratic tendencies.In India, opponents of the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, have complained for years that he is weakening the democratic tradition of the world’s second-largest country by population by cracking down on critics and religious minorities. The concerns reached a new level with the expulsion from Parliament of Rahul Ghandi, a prominent opponent of Mr. Modi’s, a day after a court found him guilty of criminal defamation for a line in a campaign speech in 2019 in which he likened Mr. Modi to two thieves with the same name.And after supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro — who blamed electoral fraud for his narrow defeat in December — stormed government buildings in Brazil’s capital, Mr. Biden condemned “the assault on democracy.”Supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil stormed government buildings in Brasília, the capital, in January.ReutersDemocratic setbacks have also occurred in West Africa, where there have been coups in Mali and Burkina Faso in recent years. In Nigeria, a country of 220 million people, experts say that the presidential election in February appeared suspect.In Europe, thousands of people in the Republic of Georgia have taken to the streets to protest a measure that would curb what the government calls “foreign agents,” but which activists say is an effort to crack down on nongovernmental organizations and news media groups. The State Department called a March 7 parliamentary vote approving the measure “a dark day” for democracy in Georgia, which U.S. officials have tried to support against the influences of Russia, its neighbor.The tumult over Israel’s democracy has been particularly shocking to U.S. officials and experts who have long seen the country as a paragon of democratic values and an especially bright example in a region long plagued by dictatorship.And the summit this week will notably exclude two members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Hungary and Turkey, whose autocratic political systems have grown no less repressive during Mr. Biden’s tenure.Still, some people who track democratic trends say they are optimistic.“Perhaps the most striking indication of democracy’s forward movement over the last two years has been the election of President Biden, and the election of President Lula in Brazil,” said Sarah Margon, the director of foreign policy at Open Society-U.S.Those events “sent a critical message to people who are looking to defeat autocrats or leaders with autocratic tendencies,” added Ms. Margon, whom Mr. Biden nominated last year to the State Department’s top position for human rights and democracy. (Her nomination expired after Republican opposition and was not renewed in January.)But many world leaders profess to be unmoved by critiques from democracy advocates, especially from U.S. officials.“If they want to have a debate on this issue, let’s do it,” Mr. López Obrador said last month. “I have evidence to prove there is more liberty and democracy in our country.” More

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      Rahul Gandhi, Leader of India’s Opposition to Modi, Disqualified From Parliament

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      The expulsion of Rahul Gandhi is a devastating blow to the once-powerful Indian National Congress party. He and several other politicians are now in jeopardy through India’s legal system.NEW DELHI — Rahul Gandhi, one of the last national figures standing in political opposition to Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, was disqualified as a member of Parliament on Friday, sending shock waves across the country’s political scene and devastating the once-powerful Indian National Congress party Mr. Gandhi leads.Mr. Gandhi was expelled from the lower house the day after a court in Gujarat, Mr. Modi’s home state, convicted him on a charge of criminal defamation. The charge stemmed from a comment he made on the campaign trail in 2019, characterizing Mr. Modi as one of a group of “thieves” named Modi — referring to two prominent fugitives with the same last name. Mr. Gandhi received a two-year prison sentence, the maximum. He is out on 30 days’ bail.Any jail sentence of two years or more is supposed to result in automatic expulsion, but legal experts had expected Mr. Gandhi to have the chance to challenge his conviction. A notification signed by a parliamentary bureaucrat appointed by Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday stated that Mr. Gandhi had been disqualified automatically by the conviction itself, per the Constitution of India.“They are destroying the constitution, killing it,” said Srinivas B.V., president of the Indian National Congress Party’s youth wing. “The court gave Mr. Gandhi 30 days to appeal against the order, and hardly 24 hours have passed since.”Mr. Gandhi said in a Twitter post on Friday, “I am fighting for the voice of this country. I am ready to pay any price.”Lawmakers from the Congress Party and other opposition parties protesting outside of India’s parliament in New Delhi on Friday.Altaf Qadri/Associated PressMr. Srinivas said the party will fight the expulsion, politically and legally. One of the party’s most prominent members, Shashi Tharoor, who like Mr. Gandhi is a member of the lower house in the state of Kerala, said on Twitter that the action ending his tenure in Parliament was “politics with the gloves off, and it bodes ill for our democracy.”Mr. Gandhi, a scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family whose father, grandmother and great-grandfather served as prime minister, has taken pains to improve his national profile in recent months. He led an unexpectedly popular march late last year across swaths of India, rallying crowds to “unite India” against the Hindu-first nationalism espoused by Mr. Modi. And since the fortunes of Gautam Adani, a tycoon long associated with Mr. Modi, collapsed under pressure from a short-seller’s report in January, Mr. Gandhi has been using his platform in Parliament to call for an investigation of his business empire.The Congress Party is not alone in worrying about the implications for India’s democracy that Mr. Gandhi’s disqualification poses. With parliamentary elections coming next year, the government’s attempts to clamp down on dissent seem to be gaining momentum, other opposition leaders pointed out.Last month, Manish Sisodia, the second in command of the Aam Aadmi Party, was arrested on charges related to fraud. Earlier this month Kavitha K., a leader from a regional party that recently turned to national politics, was questioned by federal investigators in connection with the same case.The string of criminal cases against politicians — though none have been brought against high-profile members of Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P. — contrasts awkwardly with Mr. Modi’s presentation of India as “the Mother of Democracy” during a global publicity blitz to accompany its hosting the Group of 20 summit meeting this year.Police raids against the BBC’s office in India and some of the country’s leading think tanks have intensified doubts about the strength of India’s democracy. Eliminating the opposition from parliament through the courts might heighten those misgivings dramatically. More

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      Macron Faces an Angry France Alone

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      President Emmanuel Macron saw his decision to push through a change in the retirement age as necessary, but the price may be high.PARIS — “We have a president who makes use of a permanent coup d’état.” That was the verdict of Olivier Faure, the leader of the French Socialist Party, after President Emmanuel Macron rammed through a bill raising the retirement age in France to 64 from 62 without a full parliamentary vote this past week.In fact, Mr. Macron’s use of the “nuclear option,” as the France 24 TV network described it, was entirely legal under the French Constitution, crafted in 1958 for Charles de Gaulle and reflecting the general’s strong view that power should be centered in the president’s office, not among feuding lawmakers.But legality is one thing and legitimacy another. Mr. Macron may see his decision as necessary to cement his legacy as the leader who left France prepared to face the rest of the 21st century. But to many French people it looked like presidential diktat, a blot on his reputation and a blow to French democracy.Parliament has responded with two motions of no confidence in Mr. Macron’s government. They are unlikely to be upheld when the lawmakers vote on them next week because of political divisions in the opposition, but are the expression of a deep anger.Six years into his presidency, surrounded by brilliant technocrats, Mr. Macron cuts a lonely figure, his lofty silence conspicuous at this moment of turmoil.“He has managed to antagonize everyone by occupying the whole of the center,” said Jacques Rupnik, a political scientist. “Macron’s attitude seems to be: After me, the deluge.”This isolation was evident as two months of protests and strikes that left Paris strewn with garbage culminated on Thursday in the sudden panic of a government that had believed the pension vote was a slam dunk. Suddenly, the emperor’s doubts were exposed.Mr. Macron thought he could count on the center-right Republicans to vote for his plan in the National Assembly, Parliament’s lower house. Two of the most powerful members of his government — Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire and Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin — came from that party. The Republicans had advocated retirement even later, at 65.Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, bottom left, with lawmakers at the National Assembly on Thursday. If the government falls in a no-confidence vote, she will no longer be prime minister.Alain Jocard/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesYet out of some mixture of political calculation in light of the waves of protest and spite toward the man who had undermined their party by building a new movement of the center, they began to desert Mr. Macron.Having his retirement overhaul fail was one risk that even Macron the risk taker could not take. He opted for a measure, known as the 49.3 after the relevant article of the Constitution, that allows certain bills to be passed without a vote. France’s retirement age will rise to 64, more in line with its European partners, unless the no-confidence motion passes.But what would have looked like a defining victory for Mr. Macron, even if the parliamentary vote in favor had been narrow, now looks like a Pyrrhic victory.Four more years in power stretch ahead of Mr. Macron, with “Mr. 49.3” stamped on his forehead. He made the French dream when he was elected at age 39 in 2017; how he can do so again is unclear.“The idea that we are not in a democracy has grown. It’s out there all the time on social media, part conspiracy theory, part expression of a deep anxiety,” said Nicolas Tenzer, an author who teaches political science at Sciences Po university. “And, of course, what Macron just did feeds that.”The government’s spokesman is Olivier Véran, who is also minister delegate for democratic renewal. There is a reason for that august title: a widespread belief that over the six years of the Macron presidency, French democracy has eroded.After the Yellow Vest protest movement erupted in 2018 over an increase in gas prices but also an elitism that Mr. Macron seemed to personify, the president went on a “listening tour.” It was an attempt to get closer to working people of whom he had seemed dismissive.Now, almost one year into his second term, that outreach seems distant. Mr. Macron scarcely laid the groundwork for his pension measure even though he knew well that it would touch a deep French nerve at a time of economic hardship. His push for later retirement was top-down, expedited at every turn and, in the end, ruthless.Outside the National Assembly, French Parliament’s lower house, on Friday. Mr. Macron thought he could count on center-right Republicans there to vote for his plan, but they began to desert him.Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe case for the overhaul was strong. It was not only to Mr. Macron that retirement at 62 looked untenable as lives grew longer. The math, over the longer term at least, simply does not add up in a system where the ratio of active workers to the retirees they are supporting through their payroll taxes keeps dropping.But in an anxious France, with many people struggling to pay their bills and unsure of their futures, Mr. Macron could not make the argument. In fact, he hardly seemed to try.Of course, the French attitude to a mighty presidency is notoriously ambiguous. On the one hand, the near-monarchical office seems to satisfy some French yearning for an all-powerful state — it was a French king, Louis XIV, who is said to have declared that the state was none other than himself. On the other, the presidency is resented for the extent of its authority.Mr. Macron seemed to capture this when he told his cabinet on Thursday, “Among you, I am not the one who risks his place or his seat.” If the government does fall in a vote of censure, Élisabeth Borne will no longer be prime minister, but Mr. Macron will still be president until 2027.“A permanent coup d’état,” Mr. Faure’s phrase, was also the title of a book that François Mitterrand wrote to describe the presidency of de Gaulle. That was before Mr. Mitterrand became president himself and in time came to enjoy all the pomp and power of his office. Mr. Macron has proved no more impervious to the temptations of the presidency than his predecessors.Protesters at a train station in Bordeaux, France, on Friday. Demonstrations and strikes over the pension bill have gone on for two months and continued after Mr. Macron’s decision to avoid a full vote.Philippe Lopez/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut times change, social hierarchies fall, and Mr. Macron’s exercise of his authority has stirred a strong resentment in a flatter French society at a moment of war-induced tension in Europe.“There is a rejection of the person,” Mr. Tenzer said. The daily newspaper Le Monde noted in an editorial that Mr. Macron ran the risk of “fostering a persistent bitterness, or even igniting sparks of violence.”In a way, Mr. Macron is the victim of his own remarkable success. Such are his political gifts that he has been elected to two terms in office — no French president had done this in two decades — and effectively destroyed the two political pillars of postwar France: the Socialist Party and the Gaullists.So he is resented by the center left and center right, even as he is loathed by the far left and the far right.Now in his final term, he must walk a lonely road. He has no obvious successor, and his Renaissance party is little more than a vehicle for his talents. This is the “deluge” of which Mr. Rupnik spoke: a vast political void looming in 2027.If Marine Le Pen of the far right is not to fill it, Mr. Macron the reformist must deliver the resilient, vibrant France for which he believes his much-contested reform was an essential foundation.A protester shot a firework at police officers in Paris on Friday.Julien De Rosa/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAurelien Breeden More