In normal times, libertarian socialist Noam Chomsky and neoconservative Bill Kristol would be disagreeing about almost any issue.
But these are not normal times. Both Chomsky and Kristol were among a group of more than 40 prominent intellectuals from left and right who teamed up to sign “An Open Letter In Defense of Democracy.”
It’s noteworthy that the open letter was published simultaneously by both the liberal magazine The New Republic and the conservative website The Bulwark, where Kristol is the editor-at-large.
Here is a Tweet from Sherrilyn Ifill, the President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.
Among the co-signers were conservative commentators Max Boot, Charles Sykes, and Mona Charen, Stanford Prof. Francis Fukuyama, The Nation writer Joan Walsh, psychiatrist and author Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, writer Katha Pollitt, and Brookings Institution senior fellow Benjamin Wittes.
The letter pulled no punches when it came to defending democracy. The signatories urged Democrats to pass national voting rights legislation and if necessary override the Senate filibuster rule.
Since this is an open letter intended to be widely disseminated, I will quote at length from it. Its three primary signatories were two liberal professors, Todd Gitlin of Columbia University and Jeffrey Isaac of Indiana University, and Kristol.
The letter begins by noting:
“We are writers, academics, and political activists who have long disagreed about many things.
“Some of us are Democrats and others Republicans. Some identify with the left, some with the right, and some with neither. We have disagreed in the past, and we hope to be able to disagree, productively, for years to come. Because we believe in the pluralism that is at the heart of democracy.
“But right now we agree on a fundamental point: We need to join together to defend liberal democracy.
“Because liberal democracy itself is in serious danger. Liberal democracy depends on free and fair elections, respect for the rights of others, the rule of law, a commitment to truth and tolerance in our public discourse. All of these are now in serious danger.”
And there was no both-siderism when it came to assigning blame for the threat to democracy.
“The primary source of this danger is one of our two major national parties, the Republican Party, which remains under the sway of Donald Trump and Trumpist authoritarianism. Unimpeded by Trump’s defeat in 2020, and unfazed by the January 6 insurrection, Trump and his supporters actively work to exploit anxieties and prejudices, to promote reckless hostility to the truth and to Americans who disagree with them, and to discredit the very practice of free and fair elections in which winners and losers respect the peaceful transfer of power.”
The group then came together in support of four points:
“We vigorously oppose ongoing Republican efforts to change state election laws to limit voter participation.
“We vigorously oppose ongoing Republican efforts to empower state legislatures to override duly appointed election officials and interfere with the proper certification of election results, thereby substituting their own political preferences for those expressed by citizens at the polls.
“We vigorously oppose the relentless and unending promotion of unprofessional and phony “election audits” that waste public money, jeopardize public electoral data and voting machines, and generate paranoia about the legitimacy of elections.
“We urge the Democratic-controlled Congress to pass effective, national legislation to protect the vote and our elections, and if necessary to override the Senate filibuster rule.”
They concluded the letter with a call to arms to defend democrary :
”And we urge all responsible citizens who care about democracy—public officials, journalists, educators, activists, ordinary citizens—to make the defense of democracy an urgent priority now.
“Now is the time for leaders in all walks of life—for citizens of all political backgrounds and persuasions—to come to the aid of the Republic.”
Now maybe this letter doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. But it does send a powerful warning to Democrats in Congress of the danger looming if they fail to pass The Freedom to Vote Act in the weeks ahead.