Democracy’s Unpluckable Feathers and Presidential Term Limits
In her book Fascism: A Warning, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recounts that:
“Mussolini observed that in seeking to accumulate power it is wise to do so in the manner of one plucking a chicken — feather by feather — so each squawk is heard apart from every other and the whole process is kept as muted as possible.”
We often think of dictatorships as arising from wars or coups, but Mussolini’s analogy vividly expresses how nations can slip from liberal democracies to illiberal autocracies through a series of small, incremental changes.
Considering this, the citizens of democracies would be wise to collectively identify certain core features of their democratic order as strictly inviolable. Such pre-identification allows attempts to violate these core features to be called out more easily.
To put the point in terms of Mussolini’s analogy, democracies should identify specific feathers on their democratic chickens that they agree in advance should never be plucked. If such feathers are widely recognized and highly valued, then they cannot be plucked quietly.
By an unpluckable feather, I mean a specific and nonpartisan core aspect of a democracy that is treated as inviolable because of its importance in preserving democracy…
