This week, battered Ukrainian defense forces mounted a counterattack against Russian troops stalled in their advance.
President Joe Biden has returned from his trip to Europe after launching a verbal counterattack against autocracy, with echoes meant for autocratic movements on this side of the Atlantic and inside U.S. borders.
His speech in Warsaw Saturday still reverberates across the globe. It was a stinging indictment of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and a reminder to the Russian people that they are not the enemies of the western alliance. But “the forces of autocracy have revived all across the globe” over the last several decades, he warned, showing “contempt for the rule of law, contempt for democratic freedom, contempt for the truth itself.” Ukraine stands at the front lines of “a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.”
The ideological battle, Biden said, “will not be easy. There will be costs. But it’s a price we have to pay. Because the darkness that drives autocracy is ultimately no match for the flame of liberty that lights the souls of free people everywhere.”
“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” he ended. Whether ad-libbed or planned, the White House later walked back that line, claiming that the U.S. was not calling for regime change.
Jennifer Rubin suggested Biden deliver a similar speech at home to make more explicit the threat posed by “a right-wing movement that also thinks ‘might makes right,’ that also shows contempt for a free press and elections, and that does not understand the bedrock principle of democratic elections: When you lose you allow the victor to govern.”
The Trump movement’s attempt to invade the U.S. Capitol and turn out the legitimate government of this country failed on Jan. 6. Trump’s influence seems to be on the wane. But it is wise to remember former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s June 2003 comment that what was left of Iraqi resistance were only “dead-enders.” Authoritarian forces here have stalled but not surrendered.
The other verbal counterattack against them last week came from Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey. His stirring speech to SCOTUS nominee Judge Ketanji Brown came after she’d endured two days of abuse by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was, like Biden’s defense of democratic values, a counter-narrative to the conservatives’ negative patriotism, writes Theodore R. Johnson, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice:
One narrative told of an American patriotism, born of hardship and optimism and incremental progress, oriented on our nation’s professed ideals. The other professed a patriotism that is combative, subsisting on the identification of adversaries and promoting the constant presence of threat — an inward-facing intolerant form of nationalism. The former is expansive, inclusive and unifying; the latter, narrow, restricted and privileged. With race still central to national policy debates, the hearings presented Americans with these differing versions of what it means to love our country. The week gave us a taste of both and tacitly demanded that we identify which we prefer.
On the home front as well as in Ukraine, the forces of autocracy have stalled and their advance reversed for now (CNN):
Five recent surveys have indicated strong support for President Joe Biden’s decision to nominate Jackson for the Supreme Court seat retiring Justice Stephen Breyer is vacating. According to an average of polls by Gallup, Fox, Monmouth University, Quinnipiac University and the Pew Research Center, about 53% of Americans supported her confirmation, with about 26% of Americans opposed. This is good for a +27-point net popularity rating.
If Jackson’s ratings hold up through her likely confirmation, she would be the most popular nominee to be confirmed since John Roberts in 2005. Jackson’s popularity should only help her in the confirmation process.
This ideological battle, here and abroad, will not be easy, as Biden said. There will be setbacks. But there is still hope.
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