Democracies and mutual tolerance

The idea at the heart of liberalism is mutual tolerance. I will not infringe on your rights as long as you do not infringe on mine. I will treat you reasonably when I have power over you because I expect you to do the same when you are in charge.

It is a political philosophy based on reasonableness, and especially suited to a democracy where people routinely disagree. It is also intuitive, so ingrained in human behavior that we take it as a measure for what it means to be a decent person. It is the hard-won wisdom of people who have experienced real oppression: tolerance is a small price to pay to establish the rules in a repeated game that lasts for generations.

In How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt warn that as mutual toleration and forbearance falter, political figures stop seeing normal democratic processes as a means of resolving conflict. Loss of power is presented as so catastrophic that it justifies anything to prevent it, including the abuses of existing power.

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The nomination of Todd Blanche as Attorney General is a good illustration of the collapse of mutual tolerance and reasonable pluralism. While the philosopher Karl Popper argued that liberalism rested on intolerance of intolerance, what we have instead is a partisan tolerance of intolerance.

More than any other Trump official (with the possible exception of Russ Vought), Blanche represents the logic of intolerance as a guide to the use of public power: The President must be defended and his enemies must be attacked using state power.

It is not possible for such a conviction to guide your job as Attorney General and to embrace democratic norms. To recap, here are some of the ways Blanche has used the office:

Blanche oversaw the “Weaponization Working Group” that pushed for prosecutions of figures like Senator Adam Schiff, New York Attorney General Letitia James and the Federal Reserve’s…