Here, Douthat offers what is intended to be a parody of liberal reliance on expertise and autonomy. Instead, it is a parody of Douthatism: the tendency to waive away the excesses of radical right and equate them as equivalently dangerous the basic aspects of running a democracy.
Douthat: Trump attempting a coup and managing to create massive distrust in US elections is not good, no, but it's complicated. Cast in a certain light it reflects intellectual traditions on the right.
Also Douthat: Now let me tell you about the dangers of schoolteachers.
There is so much in this single paragraph that it falls apart on the slightest inspection. Did Fauci "lead" pandemic decision making? No, the President does, and is free to discard Fauci's adivce.
Better ?: would we have been better off granting Trump the power to fire Fauci? No.
Who decides who teaches your kids? In the US, to an unusual degree, educational decisions are subject to close democratic control. Reading this you would think there is an effort to reduce such control. But the opposite is true, as I explain (r). donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-purposes…
Just FYI, Irish support for EU membership is between 70-90%.
Yes, it overturned one referendum with another, effectively an "are you sure?"
Now I want you to take a close look at Brexit and ask yourself which model was better for Irish citizens.
Done correctly, the delegation of power *is a feature* of democracy that enables democratic collectives to achieve their shared goals.
What has changed is a populist minority trying to impose their values over others. I'm not sure that is quite as democratic as Douthat portrays.
To take the specific examples that Douthat raises: the right-wing populists he praises have a) undermined faith in democracy and inspired a push to make it harder to vote, b) made it harder for the US to deal with a pandemic by accepting public health guidance and...
c) led to an assault on school curriculum where materials that seek to discuss the experiences of minority groups are suppressed and teachers risk being fired for sharing it.
The kneecapping of collective action is not, in fact, a democratic idea.
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.