(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Kitchen Table Kibitzing: Justice Souter's warning on how 'democracy dies' [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-17
Justice David Souter, who passed away on May 8 at the age of 85. was a rarity among Supreme Court Justices in the modern era. Appointed by George H.W. Bush, he was expected to be a reliable conservative vote in the right’s decades-long project to “reinterpret” the Constitution to favor white and wealthy males at the expense of everyone else.
You could understand their hopes. Armed with an ersatz jurisprudence wrapped in lofty terms like “originalism” and “strict construction,” one that had already been meticulously constructed by Rehnquist and his like-minded ilk throughout the 1980’s, their Death Star was nearing completion. They’d started with the easiest targets, whittling down the rights of criminal defendants (who—let’s face it -- no one really likes) then started clipping the wings of pesky, do-gooder federal agencies to consolidate their power. But they were ready to move onto bigger things, like gutting voting rights, ending affirmative action and of course, outlawing abortion. The time seemed fortuitous indeed.
As it turned out, those expectations were grievously wrong. As reported by Linda Greenhouse, writing for the New York Times, Souter’s “migration” from conservative to liberal Justice profoundly dismayed conservative Republicans, leading them “to the cry of ‘no more Souters’ when another president named Bush, George W., had Supreme Court vacancies to fill.” The Death Star would have to wait a few more years.
Even after his retirement in 2009 Souter generally eschewed discussions of politics. But in a public forum held at an arts center in New Hampshire he took a question from a member of the audience. She simply asked him about the role of schools in producing civically-engaged students.
Souter took her question quite seriously, and ran with it:
As reported by Adam Liptak, also writing for the Times, Souter began with what he characterized as “the bottom line:”
“I’ll start with the bottom line,” he said. “I don’t believe there is any problem of American politics and American public life which is more significant today than the pervasive civic ignorance of the Constitution of the United States and the structure of government.” [***] “That is how the Roman Republic fell,” he said, with Augustus becoming an autocratic emperor by promising to restore old values. The rise of such a strongman was hastened, Justice Souter said, by public ignorance. Americans’ lack of knowledge means, he said, that “the day will come when somebody will come forward, and we, and the government will, in effect, say: ‘Take the ball and run with it. Do what you have to do.’”
Souter warned that the election of such a person to power could be the natural outcome of such widespread ignorance of Americans about civics, specifically about their own country’s history and structure and purpose of their government.
He said he was worried that public ignorance about how American government works would allow an authoritarian leader to emerge and claim total power. “That is the way democracy dies,” he said. “An ignorant people can never remain a free people,” the justice said. “Democracy cannot survive too much ignorance.”
Of course, as Liptak points out, he couldn’t have been speaking about Trump at the time: “Among the things the justice did not pay attention to were New York real estate and reality television.”
Still, it looks like he pretty much nailed it, doesn’t it?
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/5/17/2322859/-Kitchen-Table-Kibitzing-Justice-Souter-s-warning-on-how-democracy-dies?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
