American democracy is fighting for its life | Lee Drutman

The Republican party has turned into a genuinely illiberal party, and poses a threat to the continuation of US democracy as we've known it

A little more than a century after the American president Woodrow Wilson promised to make the world safe for democracy" by committing troops in the first world war, the US is now in a fight to keep its own democracy safe.

The images of the 6 January siege on the US Capitol offer a stunning portrait of US democratic fragility. A violent mob, bearing red Trump flags alongside a menagerie of extremist insignias, overran police and ransacked the seat of government after attending a nearby Trump rally. Republican congressional leaders, after some initial mealy mouthed attempts to condemn Donald Trump for his role in the rally, have since gone quiet, hoping that if they cover their ears, avert their eyes, and play culture war" instead, they can avoid a reckoning. This is reflected most starkly in congressional Republicans' refusal to support a bipartisan commission to examine the events of 6 January. Worse, some elected Republicans have rewritten history in record time by recasting the mob as akin to peaceful tourists. In the long history of democratic declines, a telltale alarm is when partisan leaders refuse to address violent actions by their supporters, thus effectively condoning and even welcoming them.