In this episode of Democracy Works from The McCourtney Institute for Democracy, the team discusses democracy’s many doomsayers and how to heed their warnings for the future without falling into despair.
Podcast: On democracy's doomsayers
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U.S. Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem during a meeting of the Cabinet in the Cabinet Room of the White House on January 29, 2026 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Collective Punishment Has No Place in A Constitutional Democracy
Feb 08, 2026
On January 8, 2026, one day after the tragic killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Kristi Noem, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, held a press conference in New York highlighting what she portrayed as the dangerous conditions under which ICE agents are currently working. Referring to the incident in Minneapolis, she said Good died while engaged in “an act of domestic terrorism.”
She compared what Good allegedly tried to do to an ICE agent to what happened last July when an off-duty Customs and Border Protection Officer was shot on the street in Fort Washington Park, New York. Mincing no words, Norm called the alleged perpetrators “scumbags” who “were affiliated with the transnational criminal organization, the notorious Trinitarios gang.”
Norm said that following the shooting, DHS “began to target every single last person who is affiliated with them.” All that was pretty standard fare for our Homeland Security Secretary.
What was not standard fare was that she delivered remarks while standing behind a podium bearing the phrase “One of Ours, All of Yours.” Above that phrase was the Department of Homeland Security’s logo
“One of Ours, All of Yours” is not the kind of promise law enforcement agencies typically make. Indeed, its website proclaims that ICE will “protect America” and “preserve national security and public safety.”
Noem left that language behind and substituted a threat of collective punishment.
Constitutional democracies provide due process and determine guilt through trials conducted according to strict procedures. Whatever our political differences, Americans should treasure and defend that commitment and lobby Congress to ensure that ICE adheres to it.
In contrast, collective punishment was a tactic used by the Nazi’s during World War II. As one commentator notes, the phrase “One of Ours, All of Yours” evokes “the Lidice Massacre in June 1942, where Nazis retaliated for…(the) assassination (of a high-ranking figure in the German SS) by wiping out the Czech village.”
“SS forces,” they continue, “shot nearly all men over 14, sent women to Ravensbrück camp, and scattered children…. They then razed the site, killing about 340 in a symbol of terror tactics.”
Let’s be clear, collective punishment is never justified, not even to deter violence directed at an individual. It corrodes democratic life and is explicitly prohibited by international humanitarian law.
For example, Article 33 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War says that “No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.”
As Professor Shane Darcy observes, in a just society, “an individual may be punished for acts or omissions only where there is personal wrongdoing on that person’s part; that is to say, one person cannot generally be punished for the acts of another.” But Noem seems to be less interested in doing justice than in using ICE to instill fear.
America should be better than that.
“(L)egions of masked immigration officers operating in near-total anonymity on the orders of the president,” Pro Publica’s J. David McSwane and Hannah Allam argue, “cross(es)… a line that had long set the United States apart from the world’s most repressive regimes. ICE…has become an unfettered and unaccountable national police force.”
And what do we make of Noem’s use of the phrase “One of Ours, All of Yours”? It is not the first time that members of the Trump Administration have invoked or alluded to things that would once have been taboo in American politics.
But no more.
“Several high-profile political leaders have,” Professors David Collinson and Keith Grint observe, “in recent months been seen apparently dabbling in Nazi allusions. In many cases, dog whistle messages send oblique signals to supporters. These are pitched at a frequency that most listeners can’t hear but are meaningful to those seeking confirmation of their own views.”
Recall Elon Musk’s straight-arm salute during rallies to celebrate the inauguration of President Trump for a second term. Steve Bannon did the same thing during the annual conference of the Conservative Political Action Committee.
And the president himself has used language associated with the Nazi regime when he calls political opponents “vermin” and accuses immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country”.
Let me be clear, I do not mean to suggest that Noem, Musk, Bannon, or President Trump are Nazi sympathizers. What seems clear, however, is that they are offering a vision of a society inexorably divided between insiders and outsiders and friends and enemies.
The vision of ICE they offer is as an enforcer of those boundaries, operating with impunity.
It is one thing for a leader to communicate to those who work under her that she will have their backs. It is quite another thing to talk in ways that instill terror in the population that ICE serves.
The United States has had a serious problem of illegal immigration, and we need to address the consequences of that problem. But we don’t need to do so by pitting Americans and residents of this country against each other or encouraging ICE agents to regard migrants as a less-than-human threat.
We need to address our problems in ways appropriate to a constitutional democracy.
The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti should remind us that no one can be safe unless we do so. Kristi Noem’s embrace of collective punishment takes us in a different direction.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College.
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A critical analysis of Trump’s use of power, personality-driven leadership, and the role citizens must play to defend democracy and constitutional balance.
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Trump, The Poster Child of a Megalomaniac
Feb 05, 2026
There is no question that Trump is a megalomaniac. Look at the definition: "An obsession with grandiose or extravagant things or actions." Whether it's relatively harmless actions like redecorating the White House with gold everywhere or attaching his name to every building and project he's involved in, or his more problematic king-like assertion of control over the world—Trump is a card-carrying megalomaniac.
First, the relatively harmless things. One recent piece of evidence of this is the renaming of the "Invest in America" accounts that the government will be setting up when children are born to "Trump" accounts. Whether this was done at Trump's urging or whether his Republican sycophants did it because they knew it would please him makes no difference; it is emblematic of one aspect of his psyche.
But while in most other instances one could criticize Trump's passion as tacky, they really did not benefit him in any material way. The "Trump" accounts are a different matter. Here you have an account that the government plans to set up for children when they are born (and at least one philanthropist is planning on adding to) to enable them to partake of the wealth of America, not through their labor but through investment.
Millions of children will forever have these "Trump" accounts, which will make them feel indebted to Trump, and by connection to the Republican Party, not to the government. It's as if Social Security were called FDR Security and Medicare and Medicaid were called LBJ Care/Aid.
The idea is ludicrous. These are all government plans, paid for by taxpayers, that benefit people who need assistance, whether it's the elderly or the poor. The person who was President and pushed for their legislative passage gets credit, but not by having his name attached to it.
When Republicans are no longer in control of Congress, the accounts should be returned to their original name: "Invest in America." Actually, a better name might be "Invest in Children" accounts.
Another recent example is the renaming of the Kennedy Center as the Trump - Kennedy Center to honor Trump. The Center's Board (all Trump appointees, with the one Democrat representative muted out of the vote) voted to make this change. Again, this was not instigated by Trump, rather by allies who wanted to please him, which he was, saying that, "I was honored by it."
While his petty megalomania is probably the least of his faults, it is nevertheless unseemly. It is something one would expect of the president of a "banana republic" or some dictator, not the President of the United States.
Far from petty and potentially harmful to the United States are the aggressive domestic and international actions that flow from his grandiosity. His exalted regard for himself has resulted in taking all domestic power unto himself and exacting retribution against his many perceived political enemies.
Internationally, we have seen this recently in his actions towards Venezuela and his ongoing talk of seizing Greenland; again, his exalted opinion of himself is reflected in his quest for power, his feeling that he is God-like—what he says or thinks is the final word.
The most forthright example of this came in a recent interview with The New York Times. He said that the only limit to his global power was, "My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
Unfortunately, the fact that he is a caricature, a buffoon, will not cost him any votes. As long as his supporters think he is good for them and for America, he will have their support. The New York Times reported that most Republican voters approve of his actions in Venezuela because, although they disapprove of nation-building, they think his actions were good for America because they projected strength while not committing American troops on the ground or costing American lives.
Bottom line, his grandiosity will unlikely cause him any damage politically, unless an action fails embarrassingly (e.g., had the hit command helicopter over Caracas crashed rather than flown on).
When America is ruled by a President who relishes brute power and displays example after example of megalomania, America has fallen in stature, not just in the eyes of the rest of the world, but, more importantly, in the eyes of all Americans who understand the importance of humaneness to what made America great.
What can you, as an individual citizen, do to return our government to one based on reason and respect for others? There are three basic things that the individual can do to protect our democracy: engage in mass peaceful demonstrations; encourage discussion of this issue within your community by suggesting such programs to local organizations and schools; and ultimately to vote in the upcoming midterm elections to return Congress to the control of the Democrats and thus restore the balance of power that the Founding Fathers intended, enabling the people's representatives to put a brake on the unbridled exercise of Presidential power.
It is absolutely critical that masses of individual citizens raise their voices. It shows the President and his supporters that they will pay a price for their actions. It shows the silent majority of Americans who are offended by the President's actions that they are not alone and encourage them to not sit on the sidelines, saying, "What can I do?" And it shows the rest of the world that the President does not speak for many of us; that he has not been given a blank check to govern.
Ronald L. Hirsch is a teacher, legal aid lawyer, survey researcher, nonprofit executive, consultant, composer, author, and volunteer. He is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Chicago Law School and the author of We Still Hold These Truths. Read more of his writing at www.PreservingAmericanValues.com
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When institutions fail, what must citizens do to preserve a republic? Drawing on John Adams, this essay examines disciplined refusal and civic responsibility.
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John Adams on Virtue: After the Line Is Crossed
Feb 04, 2026
This is the third Fulcrum essay in my three-part series, John Adams on Virtue, examining what sustains a republic when leaders abandon restraint, and citizens must decide what can still be preserved.
Part I, John Adams Warned Us: A Republic Without Virtue Can Not Survive, explored what citizens owe a republic beyond loyalty or partisanship. Part II, John Adams and the Line a Republic Should Not Cross, examined the lines a republic must never cross in its treatment of its own people. Part III turns to the hardest question: what citizens must do when those lines are crossed, and formal safeguards begin to fail. Their goal cannot be the restoration of a past normal, but the preservation of the capacity to rebuild a political order after sustained institutional damage.
When the Republic Fails Its Own Test
A government that mistreats its own people does not stop because citizens are polite or because leaders rediscover conscience. It stops when the costs of abuse rise and the supports that make abuse possible begin to fracture. In modern states, that fracture often arrives as a political wave, when legitimacy loss, institutional resistance, and electoral consequences converge faster than power can adapt.
John Adams understood this tension. He supported independence from Britain, yet distrusted disorder, mob violence, and passion unmoored from law. His defense of British soldiers after the Boston Massacre trials reflected a belief that standards must be upheld even when anger is justified.
When a republic fails its own test, citizens face a choice. They can answer lawlessness with lawlessness, often strengthening the hand of power. Or they can practice a more demanding form of resistance: disciplined refusal. As used here, disciplined refusal is nonviolent action that imposes real political, legal, or economic cost by disrupting implementation, exposing abuse, or denying legitimacy in ways power cannot easily absorb, while preserving legitimacy for whatever comes next.
The old normal is gone at the institutional level, even if much of daily life appears unchanged. Authoritarian drift leaves residues, reordering coalitions in ways that benefit power and normalizing behaviors that outlast any single administration. Moving forward depends not on restoring those old alignments, but on forming new coalitions capable of closing the divisions that authoritarian governance relies on.
1776, Honestly Assessed
Did disciplined, nonviolent resistance work in 1776? Only up to the point where political authority foreclosed every remaining nonviolent path.
Before independence, the colonies exhausted nonviolent levers. Boycotts, nonimportation agreements, and committees of correspondence created a functioning system of coordinated refusal. By 1774, the Articles of Association imposed real economic pressure on British trade and social pressure within colonial communities to enforce compliance with non-importation and non-consumption agreements. Enforcement was local and social as much as economic; communities policed compliance themselves, demonstrating capacity for self-rule even before independence.
Parliament responded with coercion. The port of Boston was closed. Massachusetts’ charter was altered. Military authority expanded. When colonial leaders appealed again, the Crown refused to engage, rejecting the Olive Branch Petition. That refusal closed the political path. Independence followed not because violence was preferred, but because alternatives had been foreclosed.
Adams supported separation while remaining wary of what unrestrained passion would do to the republic after the fighting stopped. He believed legitimacy itself was a form of power the public controlled, and once squandered, difficult to recover. His concern was never only how to break from tyranny, but how to avoid becoming it, a throughline in the Adams Papers Digital Edition.
What Disciplined Refusal Preserves
Disciplined refusal does not guarantee success. It preserves conditions without which success becomes impossible. It operates across society: citizens willing to accept personal risk, professionals and civil servants bound by ethics, local officials protecting normal life, and institutions that slow or resist abuse rather than implement it smoothly.
Nonviolent resistance preserves coalition breadth. It allows participation across levels of risk and belief and denies power the polarization it needs to endure. Authoritarian systems survive by forcing the public into two camps. When opposition turns violent, it shrinks its own tent and hands the regime the story it wants to tell, that only repression can restore order.
Disciplined refusal does the opposite. It keeps the door open for conservatives who still care about constitutional constraint, for civil servants and professionals bound by ethics, for local leaders protecting normal life, and for citizens who reject both cruelty and chaos. In a polarized system, restraint is not passivity. It is strategy.
It also preserves institutional capacity. Courts, agencies, and laws remain usable when the crisis passes because they were strained, not obliterated. Privately held preferences can build beneath the surface, creating latent pressure for change that becomes decisive when political conditions shift, a dynamic analyzed by Timur Kuran in Private Truths, Public Lies.
When Violence Becomes Unavoidable
History does not show that violence is never used. It shows when violence ceases to constrain power and begins to reinforce it.
In 1776, violence emerged only after imperial authority foreclosed every remaining nonviolent mechanism. Petitions were rejected, self-government dismantled, and military rule displaced civil authority. British power still depended on broad colonial cooperation. Once that cooperation collapsed, armed conflict became the dominant fact rather than a chosen strategy.
That configuration does not hold in modern states in the same way. Britain’s imperial power, though militarily dominant, still depended on broad colonial cooperation to govern. Contemporary governments possess professional security forces, centralized intelligence, legal mechanisms for emergency rule, and the capacity to suppress violent challengers without relinquishing administrative control. In that context, violence rarely weakens power. It consolidates it, supplying justification for repression and narrowing opposition to a risk-tolerant fringe.
The lesson of 1776 is not that violence restores liberty. It is that violence followed only after legitimacy and cooperation had already broken down. Where modern states retain coercive dominance, armed rebellion is more likely to consolidate authoritarian control than restore democracy. For that reason, disciplined refusal remains decisive, not as a moral preference, but as recognition that legitimacy, compliance, and coalition breadth remain the levers that determine whether power fractures or hardens.
What Remains
John Adams did not believe that republics survive because power learns restraint. He believed they survive because citizens do.
That belief was not sentimental. It reflected hard experience with how easily justified anger becomes ruled by force. The country that emerges from this period will not be the one that preceded it. That question is settled.
The remaining question is whether it will still be governed by standards or only by force. Guardrails with real enforcement power emerge not from unity alone, but from durable alignment across differences. They are enforced through institutions and coalitions rather than through informal restraint.
Adams would say that is the responsibility that remains.
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Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.