Reporters monitor the blue-collar mobs which threaten our democracy, and as current events in the nation's capital show, rightly so. Yet they often ignore equally potent threats from educated elites, many of whom also reject the constitutional vision of the founders.
Fortunately, the U.S. military respects democracy. The final days of the current administration, led by Ivy League graduate Donald Trump, demonstrated this on a near-daily basis.
When former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn suggested that President Trump declare martial law to redo the 2020 presidential race, the military reacted with contempt. A conservative friend who works with Army officers condemned the onetime three-star general, grousing, "In my office we are wondering how Flynn made three-star--no one who wants to use the Army to take power should get promoted above corporal."
From day one of their training, American soldiers are taught to respect the Constitution. This tradition separates America from Venezuela.
American soldiers and federal civilian employees like my friend begin public service by swearing an oath not to the president, but to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." The oath was honored by all 10 living defense secretaries, including two Trump appointees, when they signed a letter prospectively denouncing involvement of the military in elections as "unlawful and unconstitutional."
I cannot say the same for certain ambitious politicians who schemed their way into top colleges in order to network their way into top jobs.
Consider Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, a graduate of Stanford and Yale Law School. In his successful 2016 race for Missouri Attorney General, Hawley promised not to use the post as a stepladder to something better. Then, barely a year after taking office, Hawley began running for senator. Hawley now seems to be running for president.
On Dec. 30 the entrepreneurial Hawley defied Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to become the first senator to endorse President Trump's call to challenge the 2020 presidential election by not certifying electoral college results.
Following Hawley's lead, 11 other Republican senators pledged to reject Electoral College votes from certain Democratic states, choosing personal loyalty to Trump over the nation's Constitution. Hawley's PR stunt likely helped cost the GOP two Senate seats in Georgia, and thus the majority.
Consider who those 12 GOP senators are and who they are not. Seven of the eight Republican senators with military experience refused to back Hawley, a risky position given likely retaliation by Trump in future primary elections. Even Trump loyalist Lindsay Graham, an Air Force veteran, chose the Constitution over the president.
Interestingly, while only one of the 12 Republicans who publicly backed Trump's power play is a veteran--Kansas Sen. Roger Marshal was an Army Reservist--five graduated from elite universities: Texas' Ted Cruz (Princeton and Harvard), Oklahoma's James Lankford (University of Texas-Austin), Tennessee's Bill Haggerty (Vanderbilt), Louisiana's John Kennedy (Vanderbilt, with additional degrees from Oxford and the University of Virginia), and as noted, Josh Hawley.
These senators are unusual only in that constitutional illiteracy usually infects the left more than the right, particularly in my sector, higher education. As the National Association of Scholars reports, prestigious colleges have largely given up teaching U.S. history, including the principles underlying the constitutional transfer of power, and the Bill of Rights, which assures freedom of speech.
This damages democracy. In "Free Speech and Liberal Education," University of Wisconsin Professor Donald Downs finds majorities of college students willing to ban speech that even one person finds "harmful, hateful, or bigoted." Elite institutions are the least tolerant of free expression. The more prestigious the college, the more likely it will adopt restrictive speech codes outlawing unpopular ideas, which on campus means conservative ideas. Satirist Ami Horowitz easily got 50 Yale students to sign petitions to abolish the First Amendment. No wonder some distrust academia.
If Ivy Leaguers are our future leaders, then our future is grim. Luckily, not all elites are constitutionally illiterate. Reflecting his military service in Iraq and Afghanistan, Harvard graduate and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton had the sense to explain why subverting the 2020 presidential election would prove both unconstitutional and politically detrimental.
If voters reward good behavior, we might get more of it.
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Robert Maranto is the 21st Century Chair in Leadership in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas and has served in local and national government. These opinions are his alone.