Too many Americans want a dictatorship, not democracy. That fails our national motto

In “Hamlet,” Shakespeare’s Queen Gertrude responds, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” when asked about her reaction to the insincere declarations of love and faithfulness of a character in a play the Queen was watching.

In the Senate confirmation hearings on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, there were many protestations that she allegedly was too soft on pedophiles. Those protestations were insincere, not in the sense of a closet homosexual preacher who rails against homosexuality before his flock, but in the sense that this nonissue with this judge was a sop to conspiracy theorists who believe many Democrats “groom” children and molest and drink the blood of infants.

Judge Jackson was undeniably extremely well-qualified. No one asserted that any of her sentencing record broke the law. She was not an outlier compared to other judges. Certain behavior at the committee hearing and in the manner in which some left the Senate chamber after a slim majority confirmed her also seemed to reflect more a rejection of the changing face of America than a statement of principled opposition to extremes on the far left.

Resentment of a changing America overlaps politics and religion. A candidate for Congress recently said at a Trump rally that “Scripture tells us that God spits lukewarm Christians out of his mouth.” I have not fact-checked that statement, but this is inconsistent with the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom in spiritual matters.

Our national motto, “E Pluribus Unum,” means, “Out of many, one.” Americans should welcome America’s changing demographic. Mutual acceptance of our founding principles and ideals and mutual assimilation of races, nationalities, ethnicities and cultures are the essence of “out of many, one.”

Our education system should anchor this mutual assimilation in a deep appreciation for the institutions of our constitutional democratic republic, and for why President George Washington in his first inaugural address said, “the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”

The success of the experiment depends on responsible leaders and citizens educated in the nation’s history and civics, and on acceptance of our national motto. Regrettably, such education has largely failed. Too many want a dictatorship. Too many leaders pander to people’s worst instincts.

In a recent CNN op-ed, former Judge J. Michael Luttig explains how the American experiment can soon fail. He describes that in 2024, swing-state legislatures could try to throw out the vote of their states’ citizens using the “Independent State Legislature” doctrine. This doctrine claims that language in the Constitution permits state legislatures to select the state’s electors for president irrespective of which candidate won the vote of the people in the state. This doctrine asserts the state legislature’s action cannot be overturned by the state’s judiciary.

The doctrine apparently relies on this language in the Constitution: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress….”

But read as a whole, the Constitution also states: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, … the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution….” The Constitution further states: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States …; … shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, ….”

Does the guaranteed Republican form of government include, like the Supreme Court’s power to declare a law of Congress unconstitutional, a state judiciary’s power to declare a state legislature’s act unconstitutional under the state’s constitution? Does the Supremacy Clause of the national Constitution, the Constitution’s Amendments, and federal laws protecting civil rights, also bar the “Independent State Legislature” doctrine?

The Supreme Court may soon address these issues unless the real-time horrors of Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship deter an attempt to use the doctrine. Those horrors should.

Daniel O. Jamison is a retired attorney in Fresno, California.