Tom Kirvan
Legal News, Editor-in-Chief
There was a glimmer of hope late last month that the world’s No. 1 pariah was on the verge of being toppled.
Instead, the mutiny in Moscow only served to further embolden Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, who in the weeks ahead can be expected to take a pound of political flesh from anyone remotely connected to the aborted attempt to remove him from the world stage.
It’s a time-honored axiom that winners write the history books.
Look no further than to what Putin is attempting to do in Russia by schooling its youth on the merits of communist ideology, and the pivotal role that the country’s current president has played in the “rebirth” of a “great nation” that had been severely weakened when the Soviet Union splintered in 1991.
The Putin plan to indoctrinate a new generation of Russian youth into a totalitarian world as he shapes it was spelled out in graphic detail by The New York Times last summer in a report that laid bare a “wholesale reprogramming of Russian society.”
The current effort to change the way young Russians think about their country and the world at large is rooted in history and dates to the time when Joseph Stalin ruled the former Soviet Union with an iron fist.
It also is reminiscent of what another World War II tyrant attempted to accomplish in Germany by infecting the “Hitler Youth” with the disease of Nazi propaganda as a means of justifying state-sanctioned atrocities.
A similar pattern played out in post-war China, which established a communist dictatorship in 1949 by imposing military rule and brutally quashing any political dissent, forcing nearly 3 million Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek to retreat to a safe haven on the island of Taiwan.
The three most glaring examples of nations that fell prey to the siren song of power-hungry autocrats, not surprisingly, have served as inspiration for a long line of totalitarian regimes, including current models throughout the Middle East, Far East, and South America.
Autocratic inroads also have been made in several European countries that have embraced the hate-filled rhetoric uttered by fringe political groups, generally under the guise of improving the economic fortunes of the lower- and middle-class sectors of the populace.
Perhaps Western society’s greatest threat to democratic rule, of course, occurred over a two-month period in the overlapping years of 2020-21 when another would-be autocrat incited a political insurrection in a desperate attempt to remain in power after losing the presidential election.
The attempt failed, thankfully, but the seeds already are being sown for yet another try at destroying our democracy by his continuing efforts to con, dupe, and mislead his followers.
Those efforts are being enabled by countless politicians at the local, state, and national levels who have been bullied into complacency and complicity, unwilling to take a stand for the principles of honesty and integrity.
That process has been compromised by the sharp edge to today’s partisan politics, where the party in power regularly subverts the will of the people by gerrymandering legislative districts to its distinct advantage. The age-old process must stop, just as quickly as concerted efforts to suppress the right to vote if we are to prevent an unfortunate return to the discriminatory practices of the past.
Surprisingly, the U.S. Supreme Court took a stand June 27, rejecting in a 6-3 ruling the “independent state legislature” theory that threatened to upend state election laws nationwide.
The decision in the North Carolina case of Moore v. Harper was applauded by Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a former dean of Wayne State University Law School.
“The ruling is a victory for Michigan’s citizen-led and voter-enacted independent redistricting process and the two recent voter-enacted amendments to Michigan’s state constitution that have expanded options to vote in our state for every eligible citizen,” said Benson.
“And it sends a strong signal against the continued misuse and abuse of our federal courts to advance spurious, anti-democracy legal theories and frivolous election challenges,” she added.
“With the 2024 election just around the corner, we hope and expect that our federal courts will continue to serve as an important partner in protecting the will of every American. Today’s decision gives me great confidence that will continue to be the case."
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