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By VELIA GOVAERE -  Professor UNED

As spurious as they may be, political crusades are often dressed up in ideological narratives. There is no ideal vaccinated against this contagion. Nothing illustrates it better than the phrase attributed to Manon Roland on her way to the guillotine: "Liberté, que de crimes on commet en ton nom!". It is so. The human paradigm suffers from this chronic ailment. It upholsters national interests with sublime chimeras. When even religion itself has often been drained of its spirit, it is not surprising that the most insignificant banners become mired in soulless formalisms. It is human, all too human, as Nietzsche would say.

We live in one of those confusing times, when form can pervert content. Authentic ideals that sustain life in common can be manipulated for adulterated purposes. This is the case of the defense of democracy as a principle of social contract, which is something very different from the defense of "democracy" as an offensive of geopolitical interests.

In every corner of the globe, democracy is under siege, but its enemies are far from external. As a form of government, nothing threatens it more than lack of cohesion, inequality, denial of political identity and deprivation of opportunity. Chile has just demonstrated this. Economic growth is not enough. No progress is sustainable on injustice and inequality. The momentum of the enemies of democracy feeds on abandonment. Because no one stalks democracies from the outside and, if they do, their greatest enemy is within.

Biden just held a "Democracy Summit". There, countries of dubious human rights credentials lifted the veil on their barely more transparent goal of being a geopolitical crusade. It was the United States, as a hegemonic power, against the rise of the Chinese star, as an emerging power. This was the background to this call, which overlooks the fact that what is decisive for humanity at the international level is not a fragmentation with ideological overtones, but historical collective battles that demand collaboration: climate change, universal vaccination capacity, technological coupling and commercial functionality.

Which is not to say that the defense of democracy is not the most decisive battle that will define the legacy of Joe Biden's presidency. But his first concern should not be on the outside, but on the inside. Of all the threats, democracy is no more vulnerable than in its own cradle, where on September 17, 1787, the first Constitution of the liberal democratic system was adopted in Philadelphia. Even before the French Revolution, the United States adopted there a political system that has become the archetype of Western civilization. Such is its veneration that its forms often replace its substance with impunity. On the dubious altar of democracy as an ideology more than one nation has been invaded. Dario had noted that irony: "lighting the path of easy conquest, Liberty raises her torch in New York".

But this democracy took up the deepest ponderings of the previous 200 years of Enlightenment political thought. Hegel himself, without fully understanding it, considered it the most appropriate political form for the recognition of the same human essence valued with the universal suffrage of a vote without distinctions. This yearning for self-esteem was, for him, the very hallmark of humanity, as opposed to the animal kingdom, even more so than thought.

That was what the suffragists defended, the fulfillment of the promise that the democratic premise had installed in their consciences. That was the impetus for the abolition of slavery, the respect for their human worth expressed in the unrestricted exercise of the suffrage. That is why the offensive of the Republican Party to hinder the vote, focused against the African-American and Latino population, is so worrying. This is the internal enemy of American democracy. That is where it must defend itself. Hic Rhodus hic salta.

In 2021, 19 states passed 34 laws restricting the vote. And that's not the end of the offensive. There are 440 more bills in the pipeline. It's clear: the greatest dangers to that democracy are not outside its borders. Democratic legislators understand this. Since the beginning of this legislature, the House of Representatives prioritized and approved two bills that, because they are federal, would overlap state restrictions and prevent most of the restrictions to free and fair elections. They are the "Freedom to Vote Act" and the "John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act." Both form a stronghold of defense of democracy where it is under attack.

President Biden understands that if he fails to get the Senate to pass such legislation in 2022, this impotence will be his legacy. And he himself clearly confesses: "This sinister combination of voter suppression and electoral subversion is un-American, anti-democratic and unprecedented since Reconstruction" (WP 12/17/2021). He is determined to put up a fight, but understands the gravity and urgency of overcoming the Republican blockade, only surmountable without filibustering. He has until November 2022, when he will probably lose the majority to confront it. Biden has a historic responsibility that the Democrats of the world support. A year after the assault on Capitol Hill, the defense of democracy in the United States is a crusade that is more than justified and of reserved prognosis, painfully so.

The danger of our time is that democracy fails where its defense is legitimate and triumphs where its defense is ideological. That would leave us with the first democracy on crutches in a fragmented world with a dangerous decoupling from China. It would be a high-risk world because American democracy is the best counterweight to having a military nationalist escalation there that would put the world in check. That is why the difference between democracy and geopolitics is so important.