Tip-Off #188 – Rugged democracy

Concerned about divine retribution for slavery, Thomas Jefferson remarked that he trembled for his country when he considered the justice of God. Today, some view Donald Trump as a form of punishment or a providential reckoning for American political immoralities.

Headlines and books proclaim “the end of liberalism” or “the end of democracy,” revealing our tendency to conflate these distinct concepts.

Democracy can exist without liberal values. Liberals may operate outside democratic frameworks. While democracy and liberalism can form a powerful political alliance, their union is neither automatic nor guaranteed.

Ancient Athens, democracy’s birthplace, differed fundamentally from today’s liberal democracies. Athenians established citizen rule but lacked key liberal principles: they recognized no universal human rights and maintained state religious authority.

Liberalism emerged from the 18th-century Enlightenment as a moral philosophy centered on individual autonomy. This framework provides the foundation for universal human rights and requires state neutrality in religious matters.

Viktor Orbán’s Hungary exemplifies how democratic procedures can coexist with illiberal governance. Orbán himself embraces the “illiberal democracy” label for his model. His platform centers on defending Christian values, national sovereignty, and traditional families against migration, “woke” ideology, and perceived left-wing media control. Since 2010, Hungary has maintained formal democratic mechanisms like elections while systematically eroding liberal institutions and principles—a governance approach now admired by the conservative New Right.

Without liberal safeguards, a leader can rule without limits except their own, provided they present themselves as embodying the people’s will.

Democracy alone cannot protect freedom. James Madison, the Constitution’s principal architect, recognized that majority rule without liberal protections risks becoming tyrannical. The dangerous appeal of authoritarianism lies in its democratic disguise. Leaders can claim a popular mandate while dismantling liberties that give democracy meaning. When majorities exercise unchecked power over minorities, the result is not true democracy but oppression with popular approval. Constitutional limits, separation of powers, and protected individual rights form the essential foundation of a just democratic system.

The US is called a “liberal democracy.” Our problem may be that we are just that. It isn’t easy to be both. To care at once for popular sovereignty and the will of the people while insisting on legal rights and justice for all entails endless debate. Civil rights are still a struggle, almost as bloody as before. Martin Luther King, Jr. needed Lyndon Johnson and Congress for civil rights to become federal law in the first place, not just a popular vote or a state’s choice. A liberal democracy is always an argument.

In a letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville introduced the idea of democracy as ruthless: it is true and ludicrous. It proclaims “liberty,” “justice,” and personal autonomy but, at the same time, puts those ideals up for a vote. Only if democracy is ruthless can it endure being ludicrous. However, Melville asserts, shocking everyone, “Truth is the most absurd concept. Try to get a Living by the Truth—and go to the Soup Societies.” Melville does not deny the value of truth or democracy; he suggests that, by conventional standards, truth often appears absurd and coexists with nonsense.

That is more than many can handle. It accounts for the rise of populist strongmen who exploit the electorate’s frustration with politics to ride roughshod over long-standing democratic norms and institutions. Diversity and cohesion don’t go hand in hand; liberty and justice don’t live easily together. Democracy’s ruthlessness says, “Too bad. They must.”

In his latest article for The Atlantic, political thinker Jonathan Rauch describes the president’s actions over the past two months as evidence of a new system of governance—one that is not classic authoritarianism, autocracy, oligarchy, or monarchy; one that can exist within a democracy, even as it guts democratic protections. What Donald Trump is installing in America is patrimonial rule that rewards friends and punishes enemies while forgoing formal processes and procedures.

Rausch argues that corruption is “patrimonialism’s Achilles’ heel” because the public understands it and doesn’t like it. It isn’t possible to win substantive victories on health care, climate change, or anything else if the system is rigged.

Despite popular pundits who say the public doesn’t care—and Donald Trump declaring that he could murder someone on 5th Avenue with impunity—close to three-quarters of Americans agree that the greatest threat today is corruption. People want a more representative government. Because Trump infuriates elites, he enjoys a reputation for being on the side of the ordinary person. Rausch concludes, “Breaking those perceptions can determine whether Trump’s approval rating is above 50 percent or below 40 percent, and politically speaking, that is all the difference in the world.”

Liberal norms of freedom and equality are means, not ends; they serve democracy: it needs liberalism to be itself. Ruggedness makes democracy work.

We’re tired of being told, “This country has become bloated, fat, and disgusting… the worst time in the nation’s history.” (network news, March 4th) We need to regain our voice. We have positive messages of our own. But right now, out of power, the most effective approach will be hammering home the message that Donald Trump is corrupt. He gives us plenty to work with—even the world’s richest man in a black hat.

“Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses,” Melville wrote to Hawthorne, “for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it. But I am falling into my old foible—preaching.” I get it.

Notes and reading

“This Is the Biggest Trump-Musk Scandal That No One’s Talking About: Donald Trump and Elon Musk are ushering in a new age of bribery, graft, and corruption to American politics” – Jacob Silberman, The New Republic (February 27, 2025). Silberman is a freelance journalist, and author of the just-released Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley (October 27, 2025).

“One Word Describes Trump” – Jonathan Rauch, The Atlantic (February 24, 2025). Rauch is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution. His latest book: Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy (2025).

Moby Dick – Herman Melville (1851). Oxford World’s Classics (1998). Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Tony Tanner. British literary critic of the mid-20th century, and a pioneering figure in the study of American literature. He was a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. Great introduction and meticulous explanatory notes. Includes Melville’s letters to Hawthorne.

Herman Melville in the living room – To get interested all over again in Moby Dick, read Melville’s Letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Melville would make a great conversation companion (at least for a while). Nathaniel Hawthorne was initially a close friend, but eventually distanced himself, finding Melville’s passionate intensity and intellectual demands overwhelming.

Max Weber on Trump – Jonathan Rauch examines Trump’s leadership through Weber’s lesser-known “types of domination” framework, particularly “patrimonialism” where rulers position themselves as symbolic fathers and personifications of the state. This patrimonial ruler claims special authority to protect the nation, even above the law, as exemplified by Trump’s statement: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” This analysis expands beyond Weber’s famous authority types (traditional, legal-rational, and charismatic) to explore patriarchy, patrimony, and bureaucracy as distinct systems of domination with their own subordination logics.
Key sources: Weber’s “Economy and Society” (1978) and Julia Adams’ “The Rule of the Father: Patriarchy and Patrimonialism in Early Modern Europe” (2003).

• Tune into only one person in the interconnected MAGA media ecosystem, close to J.D. Vance, follow Don Jr. “President Trump, for all his MAGA clout, has a more traditional media diet. Don Jr. eats it all.” For a good start, see X, of course @DonaldJTrumpJr. – Axios 3-6-25.

Tip-Off #187 – Kindred Spirits

Tip-Off #186 – Where are we going?

About 2 + 2 = 5