When Democracy is in Trouble, We the People Must Act

Corey Brettschneider shares 5 insights from The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It.

What do we do when American presidents undermine the democracy itself? This might seem like a contemporary question, but it’s actually been a live issue from the early days of the republic. Corey Brettschneider tells this story in the new book The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It. Corey is a professor at Brown University, where he teaches constitutional law and politics, and he’s written for the New York Times, Politico, the Washington Post, and Time. Here his to share 5 of his big ideas.

1. The right to dissent is fragile.

This right to dissent is often taken for granted. It’s thought to be in the Constitution, but our second president, John Adams, rejected the idea that the right of free speech in the First Amendment is a right to dissent. Part of why he rejected it is because he thought that the very idea of popular sovereignty––a government of “we the people” ––was not the right way to understand the American system. In fact, he thought that the president of the United States was more akin to a monarch than a democratically elected leader. Monarchs meant stability for their nations, and it followed from this perspective that critics couldn’t be allowed to criticize the president of the United States.