That's historian Heather Cox Richardson. A couple of notes from her post:
Today, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, based in Stockholm, Sweden, released its 2021 report on “The Global State of Democracy.”
“Democracy is at risk,” the report’s introduction begins. “Its survival is endangered by a perfect storm of threats, both from within and from a rising tide of authoritarianism.” “The world is becoming more authoritarian as nondemocratic regimes become even more brazen in their repression and many democratic governments suffer from backsliding by adopting their tactics of restricting free speech and weakening the rule of law.”
The report identifies the United States as one of the democracies that is “backsliding,” meaning that it has “experienced gradual but significant weakening of Checks on Government and Civil Liberties, such as Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Association and Assembly, over time.”
“The United States, the bastion of global democracy, fell victim to authoritarian tendencies itself, and was knocked down a significant number of steps on the democratic scale,” the report says.
Surprise, surprise. The U.S., which has always been a global leader in the advocacy of democracy and human rights, completely withdrew from that role for the four years of the Trump administration. He attacked fellow democracies while cozying up to dictators and autocrats all around the planet.
I was pleased to see provocateurs Roger Stone and Alex Jones have been subpoenaed by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Now if they can be forced to show up . . .
She says "conservative columnist Max Boot called out Republican lawmakers for “fomenting violent extremism” and noted that “they have also become hostage to the extremists in their ranks” because they fear for their safety should they stand up to the Trump loyalists. Right-wing extremists have threatened the lives of the 13 Republicans who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill."
It's kind of sad when elected representatives receive death threats for doing their job, and are cowed into going along for fear of violence to themselves or their families.
Two long-standing Fox News Channel contributors, Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg, quit the enterprise today over Tucker Carlson’s three-part series Patriot Purge. That series, they wrote, “is presented in the style of an exposé, a hard-hitting piece of investigative journalism. In reality, it is a collection of incoherent conspiracy-mongering, riddled with factual inaccuracies, half-truths, deceptive imagery, and damning omissions.”
They say they could no longer work at the Fox News Channel because “we sincerely believe that all people of good will and good judgment—regardless of their ideological or partisan commitments—can agree that a cavalier and even contemptuous attitude toward facts, truth-seeking, and truth-telling, lies at the heart of so much that plagues our country.”
Well, I can't stand either Goldberg or Hayes, but it's a good thing that Fox News is too much for even them, and I'm glad they have called Tucker Carlson's "Patriot Purge" the hot mess that it is.
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