Liberty and law are under attack worldwide. Consider the impeachment crisis in that context
Liberty and law are under attack worldwide. Consider the impeachment crisis in that context.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/liberty-and-law-are-under-attack-worldwide-consider-the-impeachment-crisis-in-that-context/2019/12/12/4be39dde-1d28-11ea-8d58-5ac3600967a1_story.html?
At first glance, the impeachment proceedings against President Trump might seem to be a specifically and narrowly American matter. But if you look around the world, you see this is taking place amid a deeply worrying global trend. In country after country, we are witnessing an unprecedented wave of attacks on the constitutions, institutions, norms and values that have given democracy strength and meaning.
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And this is all just in this week! If you broaden the lens, we are living through what Stanford University’s Larry Diamond has called a “democratic recession.” Except it might be turning into a depression. For 13 consecutive years, the international human rights watchdog group Freedom House has registered a decline in global freedom — fair elections, free press, individual and minority rights, etc. Freedom House has long monitored democracy in far-flung places, so one of its key findings last year was unusual: “The United States retreated from its traditional role as both a champion and an exemplar of democracy amid an accelerating decline in American political rights and civil liberties.”
This is the context in which to consider the United States’ impeachment crisis. The facts of the case are blindingly clear. Trump pressured the new Ukrainian government to investigate the Bidens, as described in sworn testimony by 17 witnesses, many of them sitting senior government officials, with each person’s account confirming the others’ — and emails, texts and the call rough transcript further documenting it all. The Republicans’ defense is that this elaborate campaign to help Trump’s reelection was actually a big misunderstanding. Trump had never asked for it; these officials, working feverishly for months across continents, were all simultaneously deluded. Call it the Walter Mitty defense.
In fact, the real defense is offense. This week the president called members of the FBI “scum,” and Attorney General William P. Barr dismissed the conclusions of the Justice Department’s own inspector general. The president and his followers now routinely attack the Foreign Service, intelligence agencies and the Justice Department. The White House has refused to honor congressional subpoenas or document requests to an extent unprecedented in U.S. history.
Across the democratic world, the institutions of liberty and law are under attack. If they give way, the fraying democratic fabric of our societies will ultimately tear apart.
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