Democracy still stands—perhaps

OPINION:

We’ve had our midterm elections and despite President Biden’s alarmism, our democracy proved robust.

Folks who won the most votes will come to Washington to bicker and compromise and do some good and some bad, owing to worthy intentions and poor judgment. We either accept human frailties or abandon our Republic like ancient Rome and return to emperors and kings.

The Republican red tide proved a ripple. The party’s gains in the House were disappointing, and Democrats continue control of the Senate. Republicans may have figured out how to dispatch Stacey Abrams but not former President Donald Trump.

The former president saddled the party with many 2020 election deniers as candidates for federal and state offices. For some,  voters looked past that liability. More broadly, voters could not ignore the party’s lack of substance among its congressional candidates.

The economy was their biggest concern, but many Republicans never went further than complaining about Mr. Biden to explain how they would fix inflation or other problems.

Lacking a coherent platform, the GOP could not raid the Democratic base and win enough independent voters. Picking up a handful of House seats, Mr. Biden did quite well compared to recent presidents in midterm elections.

Ms. Abrams finally conceded defeat in Georgia, but Democrats need to put election laws in states they control in better order and stop hectoring Republicans.

Hundreds of thousands of Georgians cast early ballots the week of October 17 whereas, in New York, the eager had to wait until October 29.

Progressive charges run deeper though. They label the January 6 riot an insurrection, but it hardly had the potential to overthrow the Republic.

Extremist groups had designs on illegally overturning the 2020 presidential election but most folks who showed up that day were there just to express their discontent. Malefactors pushed the crowd out of control, and it turned into a menacing mob.

Even if insurrectionists had seized command of the Capitol buildings and did great harm to its occupants, they were not organized where it counts. They could not call on police and the military to enforce their crimes and gain control of the federal bureaucracy and broadcast networks to proclaim a new order.

Mr. Trump could not order his Secret Service detachment to drive him to the Capitol—he didn’t even have command of his palace guard.

As for his claims of voter fraud and the failure of many GOP members of Congress to deny those, the courts and Senate Minority Leader McConnell dismissed those.

On January 6, 2005, Democratic Sens. Lott and Boxer, Rep. Clyburn and 30 other Democratic House members sought to block awarding Ohio’s electoral votes and the reelection of President Bush.

And how many Democrats in the House and Senate or among state governors have condemned Ms. Abrams over the last four year? Instead, they exhibit their own cognitive dissonance, and Mr. Biden wrongly attacks Georgia election laws as racist.

Real threats to our democracy abound—intolerance always cloaks itself in virtue.

Progressives in the media and many in Congress have an extreme agenda about climate change, fossil fuels, taxes, abortion, education, gender and sexual identity that conservatives and many moderates don’t share in whole or at least not to the progressive extreme.

Yet winning elections by obtaining the most votes to oppose progressives’ implementation is somehow a threat not only to their agenda but to democracy itself. Such seditious conduct, nay thinking, must be snuffed out or at least marginalized and disenfranchised.

Consider how professional schools and accreditation groups now require critical race theory indoctrination as a component of professional certification, and the proliferation of diversity and inclusion offices at universities and among employers.

At some universities applicants for faculty positions must write essays to explain how they affirm and acted on the goals of the Left’s agenda.

Children are coerced in high schools to help finance propaganda through their student governments.

It’s frighteningly reminiscent of fascist Germany, the old Soviet state or what goes on in China nowadays.

In Europe, among the new Italian Prime Minister’s government, neo-fascists have a place. It’s hard to see Hungarian Prime Minister Orban’s attack on an independent judiciary as much different.

Intolerance is always the enemy of pluralism and respect for significant minority views. The open-source authoritarianism of the Left—the anti-white and misandrist groups shaking down corporate leaders for support and the diversity and inclusion police—are terribly threatening and should be pulled out by the roots.

To my friends on the Left who drink the Kool-Aid of Critical Race Theory and the fabrications of the 1619 Project, if you want to talk about Mr. Trump then let’s talk about Ms. Abrams and Mr. Clyburn too.

The Left wants to talk about conservatives’ structural racism and sexism—fine, let’s talk about theirs too.

• Peter Morici is an economist and emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.