Defensive democracy

Populists create the impression that elected officials are allowed to abolish fundamental democratic rights and institutions. This impression is misleading. Democracy is founded on inalienable rights and institutions, including the separation of powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches (English Bill of Rights 1689, Virginia Bill of Rights of the USA 1789, Article 20 of the Basic Law). Anyone who seeks to eliminate these rights and institutions is acting against democracy.

Why should opponents of democracy be allowed to participate actively or even passively (as candidates) in democratic elections and thus potentially govern the democratic state? Is it because democracy would otherwise lose legitimacy in the face of its enemies? Because every exclusion would open the floodgates to mutual exclusion? Or because general legal equality, including electoral equality, is one of the foundations of a constitutional democracy?

All these objections have merit and should therefore be carefully examined; however, they do not change the need for a resilient democracy: Only a democracy that knows how to effectively defend itself against its enemies can survive – a challenge whose success or failure to succeed is likely to have long-term consequences.

Accordingly, we should contextualize the public attacks by US Vice President JD Vance against democracy in Europe and counter them with reasoned arguments: Universal freedom presupposes mutual obligations, and thus mutually recognized democratic institutions. This connection between individual freedom and mutual obligations is protected in European democracies; in the US, however, it has already been severely damaged and is in danger of being completely destroyed. We should soberly and clearly reject attempts by the Trump administration (Trump, Musk, Vance) to now also damage European democracies and the EU.