As Americans, we like to claim ourselves as the citadel and the champions of democracy. We have fought many wars in that name since WWII – notably, the Korean War (1950-1953), the Vietnam War (1955-1975), and many recent conflicts in the middle east including Yemen, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan. Presently and arguably, the war in Ukraine and the conflicts over Taiwan are also waged in the name of democracy.
Of all the conflicts, the most successful and decisive win for US democracy was the Cold War which developed after WWII between the US, the USSR and their respective allies. It was fought on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and had only limited recourse to weapons. The tense standoff that characterized the Cold War ended around 1989 – 1990 when the Berlin Wall was torn down and borders to the eastern blocks were opened. Free elections ousted Communist regimes everywhere in eastern Europe. In late 1991 the Soviet Union itself was dissolved. With stunning speed, the Iron Curtain was lifted and the Cold War came to an abrupt end.
Perhaps the most famous quote of the decisive cold war victory was made by Francis Fukuyama, a political scientist. In his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992), Fukuyama asserted that that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and free-market capitalism of the West and its lifestyle may signal the end point of humanity’s sociocultural evolution and political struggle and become the final form of human government.
Still, the democracy in the United States is still very “Young” and “Tenuous”. To get to that conclusion, let us examine a brief history of voting rights in our country:
- 1789: The Constitution grants the states the power to set voting requirements. Generally, states limited this right to property-owning or tax-paying white males (about 6% of the population)
- 1920: Women are guaranteed the right to vote in all US States by the Nineteenth Amendment. In practice, the same restrictions that hindered the ability of poor or non-white men to vote now also applied to poor or non-white women.
- 1924: All Native Americans are granted citizenship and the right to vote, regardless of tribal affiliation. Notwithstanding, some western states continued to bar Native Americans from voting until 1948.[33]
- 1943: With the abolition of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, Chinese immigrants were given the right to citizenship and the right to vote by the Magnuson Act.
- 1965: The Voting Rights Act of 1965 secured voting rights for adult citizens of all races and genders in the form of federal laws that enforced the amendments.
- Note – The origin Fifteenth Amendment (ratified in 1870) extended voting rights to men of all races. However, this amendment was not enough because African Americans were still denied the right to vote by state constitutions and laws, poll taxes, literacy tests, the “grandfather clause,” and outright intimidation. The Twenty-fourth Amendment (ratified in 1964) partly addressed this injustice by prohibiting the use of poll taxes in federal elections.
The “one-person-one-vote” principle which is the cornerstone of our democracy is only 57 years “Young”. Additionally, the controversial and still unresolved Hearings on the January 6th 2021 attack on Congress over alleged voting frauds illustrates that our country’s democracy is also “Tenuous”.
Perhaps, our country should be more introspective and put our own house in order before initiating conflicts all across the globe in the name of “democracy”.