Final Thoughts Before Election Day
by Ambassador Thomas Graham and David Bernell
On Tuesday, November 5 citizens will cast their votes in polling stations throughout the country to complete the 2024 elections, after millions have already voted early or mailed in their ballots. As they do so, we hope that they give a thought to what our country’s founders would expect of us in this situation. This is an important election, perhaps comparable to 1860 when Abraham Lincoln was elected right before the Civil War, or 1940 just before America took on Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy in World War II.
Undoubtedly our founders’ highest priority would have been to see us do our duty as American citizens – to preserve and defend our liberties and our free republic. They understood that as a free country defending our liberties, we might have enemies led by monarchies and dictatorships. But based on our military success in the Revolutionary War, they also had confidence that the United States of America could successfully resist its enemies. They worried instead that the greatest threat to American liberty would come from within.
How prescient they were. In 2024 Donald Trump represents that very threat, one that is even greater than he represented during his time in office. His words are now more focused than ever before on retribution, targeting his political opponents, and ensuring that American political institutions are employed in the service of his own personal ambitions and vendettas. Moreover, he is far more prepared to realize his goals and those of his supporters this time around. He has a loyal team that has been drawing up plans and vetting potential appointees to not only enact policy, but to capture the institutions of government and thwart opposition to Trump and his policies. In addition, there will be few, if any, responsible actors in a second Trump administration who would try to keep him from carrying out his worst impulses.
Every day provides a new example of the danger. On November 1, during a campaign stop in Arizona, Trump said that Liz Cheney, his political critic who lost her leadership in the House of Representatives and later lost her seat in Congress due to her opposition to Trump, should have guns “trained on her face.” Cheney responded that Trump’s intent is to intimidate anyone who tries to challenge him. “This is how dictators destroy free nations,” said Cheney. “They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be tyrant.”
The same day it was reported that a member of the Republican National Committee was posting fake material on X (formerly Twitter) supposedly featuring “Haitians boasting that they had been voting multiple times in Georgia.” U.S. intelligence officials reported, however, that “Russians were behind the latest in a slew of faked propaganda videos,” including the made-up charge against Haitian immigrants. Russian propaganda and interference in the U.S. election is expected at this point. The more worrisome problem is the ease with which Trump’s supporters can either be duped, or more likely, be content to spread information they know is false (sometimes with payments from Russia included), as long as it serves their aims of elevating and electing Trump. The lie that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were stealing people’s dogs and cats and eating them is but another example of this.
Our Founders were very familiar with liars and frauds, including those linked to foreign enemies, and the dangers they posed. They warned their successors against such people and urged resistance to them. In The Federalist Papers, consisting of essays by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in support of ratifying the Constitution, the first of these essays (The Federalist No. 1, by Hamilton) stated that, “A dangerous ambition often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people…those men who have overturned the liberties of republics the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.” George Washington also warned in his farewell address about the danger that, “unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
The Founders created an (albeit imperfect) Constitution to establish a government based on “certain unalienable rights” including “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” that were expressed in the Declaration of Independence. They hoped and expected that their descendants could uphold, support, and defend this government and its Constitution, which they had sacrificed so much to establish. They and their successors were also acutely aware that it had to be protected “against all enemies foreign and domestic.”
This would require a significant commitment. Thomas Jefferson is credited with saying that, “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance” against all forms of tyranny. But the country’s founders were also apprehensive about the long-term success of their project. In the best known example of such concerns, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a woman outside of Constitution Hall after the signing of the Constitution, “Well Doctor, what have we got, a Republic or a Monarchy?” Franklin replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” John Adams more pessimistically noted that, “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” And his words remind us, even today, that “a Constitution of government once changed from freedom can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever.”
These are lessons that millions of Americans recognize, and they will vote on their convictions that we cannot take chances on a second Trump presidency. Other countries have learned these lessons too. One such sentiment was shared with us recently. Our previous article about the election was sent to Dr. Hans Blix, former Foreign Minister of Sweden, Director General of the International Atomic Agency for 16 years, and United Nations Special Inspector of Iraq. Dr. Blix replied to us that Americans should, “Guard against being overcome by surprise. For most Europeans—but not all—it is hard to understand that a shady bragger can have the support of half the U.S. electorate. We must remember, however, that characters like Hitler and Mussolini because of radiating energy and dissatisfaction with existing social order could be elected. Democracy is the least defective form of government. But it is not safe.” Dr. Blix, of course, echoes the words of Winston Churchill, who famously said that “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
The United States could defeat Nazi Germany and the Axis powers in World War II, and prevail in the Cold War against the Soviet Union, but it still faces the question if the republic can withstand the domestic threat that Donald Trump poses. The Republican candidate does not exhibit support in his words or his deeds for the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights, or the idea, in the words of John Adams, that the United States must be “a government of laws and not of men.”
We wish we were wrong about the threats of a second Trump presidency, and hope that we are. But the only conclusion we can reach, based on the evidence that Donald Trump provides every time he speaks, is that the freedom of our own republic, our democracy, is on the ballot this year.
In stark contrast to Trump, the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, does support the principles that uphold the democratic freedoms of this country, recognizing that the United States of America is a free republic based on laws and not individuals. We therefore wholeheartly support her candidacy.
Even if you, the reader, believe the odds of the dire possibilities expressed in this article about a Trump return to the White House are small, it is our deepest belief that all Americans should vote to avoid even the slightest possibility of these outcomes. The risk is too great.