On September 10th, 1938, Hermann Goering gave a bellicose speech at the Nuremberg Nazi Party Rally where he exclaimed “This miserable pygmy race (the Czechs) is oppressing a cultured people (the Sudeten Germans), and behind it is Moscow and the eternal mask of the Jew devil.”¹ Applying Goering’s speech before the October 1 invasion of Czechoslovakia to the preamble of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is as simple as replacing the “Czechs” with alleged Ukrainian Nazis, “the Sudeten Germans” with Russian speaking Ukrainians, “Moscow,” ironically, with the United States, and the “Jew devil” with Ukrainian’s current President. And so, we can recognize the similarity of Putin’s unprovoked war against Ukraine with Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia: specifically, that the Ukrainian “pygmy race” of alleged Nazis who oppress Russians (the superior race) are backed by the United States and led by Zelensky, the “Jew devil.” This ironic parallelism becomes even more relevant when the strategic location of the Sudeten Germans is considered. It bordered Germany and provided the Czechs with the natural mountain defenses of Bohemia and its defensive fortifications against a Third Reich invasion. In a similar fashion, Ukraine is Eastern Europe’s borderline protection against Putin’s imperial ambitions. Like Hitler, and Napolean before him, Putin is obsessed with creating a great empire, his Eurasia, by extending his reign from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Perhaps not incidentally, he would then match America both in dominion— “from sea to shining sea”—and nuclear power. (If only Trump had been reelected, as Putin openly wished, together they could have intimidated the world. As a result, Putin would have had no need to align with China, a potentially greater threat on Russia’s border than Europe.) 

The craven imperial ambitions of Machiavellian autocrats or tribal leaders are the recurring world visions witnessed throughout human history. It is not just their recent 20th and 21st century versions. From the ancient Pandiyan and Byzantine empires to the more recent Holy Roman and Russian empires, humans have often subjugated others as sub-humans, killing them or sometimes reducing them to slavery. These last-named empires ended during the rise of the 19th century democracies of the United States and the French Republic. The nationalist and imperialist ambitions of rogue states, however, did not end. Instead, they were thwarted by democratic states, resulting in the two world wars of the 20th century. But the recurring vision of empire and the dominance of allegedly superior humans persist—along with its inhuman detritus of subservient vassals, slaves, and an impoverished proletariat. That vision, however, runs aground before the democratic concept that all humans are equal at birth and possessed of certain human rights including the opportunity to live the life they choose. Hence the inevitable struggle between democracies and autocracies persists into the 21st century. 

Democracies, as any elementary school child should know, represent an anomaly in the 315,000-year history of Homo Sapiens. With due respect for the short-lived Athenian experiment, America’s 235-year-old democracy is the longest surviving democracy. And yet it is a mere blip in the history of our kind. In fact, democracy is still in its incubation stage, not yet even an adolescent in the sweep of history. At its core, America subsists as a Constitutionally law-based government where free and fair elections allow citizens to choose their representatives and the policies that serve their general welfare. But from its birth it has suffered growing pains. There have been contested elections, starting with President Jefferson, our third President, and persisting to the present day with President Biden. And, of course, there was the Civil War, with which some present-day reactionaries seem aligned. Then, as now, the same challenges persist: should all citizens be treated equally and have the same rights of citizenship? Race and gender biases hotly contest this question. Similarly debated are what freedoms and opportunities should be granted universally to everybody. In the past, those who harbor these opposing reactions have created inhuman conditions such as slavery, gender inequality, disenfranchisement, voter suppression, and impoverished inner cities where opportunity is supplanted with hopelessness. America has grappled with these reactionaries throughout its history, even as these words are being written. 

As in the antebellum South, these reactionaries have feared the loss of white supremacy, male dominance, and wealth privilege. They believe that white men must control the wheels of power, else civilization as we have always experienced it will perish. Until that fear is understood and assuaged, humankind will continue to subsist amidst bouts of imperialistic wars and insurrections or revolutions. Western civilization does have an antidote for this “sickness unto death,” that is, the fear of relating to the humanity in others and of discovering our shared humanity. Religious principles, as exemplified by “love thy neighbor as thyself,” are reiterated in the great religions of human history. And our philosophers, artists, and cultural leaders often exemplify how to overcome the fear of losing status or power by becoming who you already are: a coequal member of a shared humanity. Once you can believe and muster the courage to “do onto others as you would have them do onto you,” you find in yourself that power you foolishly sought by dominating others. Instead, you gain power from relating to others as equals—Ich und Du.² Our common humanity reveals itself when we can identify with a fellow human being—when we indeed feel the import of “I am you.” How else should we interpret those democratic ideals by which we affirm ourselves equal by merely being born human and committed—each of us together—to form that fully human community, which is our more perfect union? 

The recurring world visions of humanity were always and universally exclusive, that is, only for the privileged, until America’s founding fathers defined the ideal of an all-inclusive society. But that ideal conflicts with human history—those recurring world visions—and the competing struggle for dominance, to include the class struggles defined by Communism and the ever-present threat of autocratic suppression. Today, American democracy is under siege by the same forces that have always defined human society, by distinguishing the “haves and have-nots,” the privileged and the subservient or “unclean classes,” the white and non-whites, the orthodox and the libertarian/libertine, and so on. Within the last century, America has fought World Wars of liberation from totalitarian regimes, welcomed immigrates from “ancient lands . . . (and) storied pomp . . . yearning to breathe free,”³ granted women the right to vote, own property, and earn fair wages equal to men, and finally extended voting and civic rights to its suppressed racial minorities. But this inclusive narrative is now and has always been at odds with the ever-prevailing narrative whereby only the socially/economically privileged or the politically self-anointed leader/savior must suppress those “not like us,” dominate all institutions of state and finance, and wield unchecked power.  

If democracy is the only answer to the recurring vision of world dominance and autocratic governance, how can it be protected, without another world war? First, we must admit the fateful import of another world war: faced with the interminable destruction of modern warfare, escalation to nuclear war could be considered the only reasonable endpoint—as witnessed by Putin’s oft repeated nuclear threats. In other words, it becomes inevitable. Democracy’s survival, then, becomes an existential necessity. Therefore, our survival demands we rededicate ourselves to our democratic ideals, reform our government wherever it conflicts with those ideals, defeat at the polls whomever candidates are misaligned with those ideals, and assure reactionaries and insurrectionists are held accountable for their disloyal/traitorous actions and demagoguery. Our current President has identified the existential struggle of our time as that between democracy and autocracy. He is not overstating the gauntlet before us all. 

A previous blog (reference “Democracy and the Just Society”) addressed the intersection between democracy and morality. Both share an arresting antecedent: we cannot support what we think is good in a democracy if we do not believe that democracy is good. But many moral philosophers have argued further that we cannot know what goodness is without becoming good. Therefore, being a good citizen in a democracy requires more than a stated preference for democracy over autocracy—though many followers of Donald Trump fail even that low hurdle. Rather, we must become good citizens in a democracy. Most of us recognize that voting in democratic elections is a prerequisite for any democracy. But our vote must be an informed vote. As a citizen in a democracy, we are responsible for the general welfare and the provision of all the rights guaranteed to us in our Constitution. Our first President warned us in his “Farewell Address” 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.” That “enablement” can only be the result of a misinformed electorate. Unfortunately, many Americans have fallen prey to the “big lie” invented by Donald Trump, believed and circulated by his sycophant partisans, and promoted by the propagandized “reporting” of certain Fox news personalities and subversive legislators. If democracy, however, is defined as “people rule,” as the Greek derivative of “democracy” implies, then it essentially and definitively depends upon its citizens’ belief in the goodness of democracy and their dedication to assure its integrity. If the logic expressed here is understood and accepted, then any citizen in a democracy who considers him/herself a patriot—that is, a person who loves his/her country—must know, believe, live, and support the principles of democracy. 

Many philosophers, historians, and sociologists have made the case for a democratically inspired self-government. But unfortunately, the ideal of democracy can never be realized unless it is defined and implemented in practice. Its proponents must define what it means for themselves, as our American founding fathers did in drafting and winning ratification of the American Constitution. But sustaining the democracy they thereby founded, unfortunately, rests not just with them, but with all the Americans who succeeded them, including present day Americans. Surely, as my readers can attest, this blog has addressed issues with equality in the light of racial, gender, and economic disparities. In fact, present day Americans confront many threats to their Constitutional rights, to include the right to life threatened by incidents of police violence and the legal possession of lethal military weapons. Also threatened are our personal liberties and opportunities that are reduced by uneven court sentencing, by unnecessary or violent policing, by job/education unavailability, and by racial and sexual biases. Those biases can and do negatively affect asylum seekers, pregnant women (reference, “The Supreme Court: A Bulwark of our Liberty”), uneven law enforcement, and available job/education opportunities. And they can generate propagandized journalism, as we have witnessed in recent suits and/or indictments against Fox News and one infamous TV huckster. Obviously, democracy presents an ongoing challenge; and America remains, as always, a work in progress.  

However far humankind may search for peace and for liberty and justice for all, the pendulum of history swings back to this recurring world vision of dominance by the few—or the one—over the many. The United Nations Charter that commits nations to honor the territorial integrity and sovereignty of other nations is violated by a generation born after the World Wars of the 20th century. Not only is history forgotten, but even the recent experience of our grandparents. The allied nations that defeated Hitler and are represented on the UN Security Council can no longer preserve the UN Charter that guarantees the territorial integrity and sovereignty of nations, mainly because of one man. Russia is not only a signatory of that Charter but sits on that Security Council as a key member dedicated to assuring the sovereignty of nations. The main offender here is its President, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, a dictator who will order a genocidal war to realize his world vision of dominance over neighboring countries. When will we all unite—including all our national leaders—to end this recurring world vision of such men and their hateful ideology that has threatened humanity throughout its history? If not now, when? And will we have another opportunity to do so? 

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1 William L. Shirer, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” p. 383. 

2 A reference to Martin Buber’s treatise, “I and Thou.” 

3 A reference to “The New Colossus,” otherwise known as the Statue of Liberty.