How democracy is preserved

Civil libertarians claim that John Ashcroft and Co. have endangered our civil liberties since 9/11, as we enter the inevitable assessments around the first anniversary of the attacks.

The American Civil Liberties Union already has pointed to the government's "insatiable appetite" for secrecy, lack of transparency, rejection of equality under the law, and "disdain and outright removal of checks and balances."

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont believes the US has been "shredding the Constitution." Others simply maintain that in our efforts to protect ourselves from terrorists we are "doing their job for them," undermining democracy.

They have it all upside down: Democracy is threatened when burning public needs are not addressed. Indeed, evidence shows that as Congress rushed through numerous measures to protect us from terrorism, support for civil liberties in this country has grown stronger, not weaker.

Americans have some direct experience in this matter. In the days when our cities were awash with violent crime, people supported police chiefs like Daryl Gates of Los Angeles, who advocated "street justice" and "shoot first, ask questions later."

At the time, the country favored excessively punitive measures, such as, "Three strikes and you're in jail forever," and preferred to spend money on incarcerating drug abusers rather than on rehabilitation. Since then, as crime subsided, Los Angeles police chiefs have been much more sensitive to individual rights, and the nation moved toward spending less on prisons and more on drug rehabilitation.

Social scientists who study the conditions under which democracy is lost have little to work with.

Democracy – once firmly established – has almost never been lost because of internal developments (as distinct from because of occupation by an invading force).

The one notable exception is the Weimar Republic. What happened there is subject to a much contested literature. However, most agree that following the defeat of Germany in World War I, the people's pride was deeply shaken, and they felt further threatened by massive unemployment and hyperinflation. The Weimar government, weakened by squabbles among numerous parties, corruption, and scandals, was unable to muster an effective response. As a result, "too many Germans did not regard it as a legitimate regime," writes E.J. Feuchtwanger in his book "From Weimar to Hitler."

In short, inaction in the face of threats, not excessive action, killed the Weimar Republic.

A quick change of scenery and decades: Some relevant data come from an event that now seems relatively small, but at the time shook the nation – the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Shortly thereafter, a hefty majority (59 percent) of Americans favored giving up some liberties, an ABC News/Washington Post poll shows. A month later, the numbers began to subside, to 52 percent.

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