I am an American By Choice

How the threat to democracy is making me rethink my choice.

(A shorter, edited version of this post appeared in The Atlantic. You can access it here.)

I am an American by choice. I came to the United States to finish my graduate studies in 1984, met the love of my life the following year, and became an American citizen a decade later.

America has been good to me. We raised a family and were lucky to offer our sons everything they needed to succeed. I taught at great universities and conducted research at leading think tanks. I served in the Clinton Administration on the National Security Council and was deeply honored to represent the United States as the Ambassador to NATO.

A Personal Story

My story is hardly unique. Hundreds of millions of people have similarly come to the United States in search of a better life.

But coming to America had deeper, more personal roots for me.

My parents in the Netherlands grew up at a time of global war. My father lived in occupied northern Holland, where he suffered the Hunger Winter of 1944-45 in which more Dutch people died of starvation than during the entire war itself. My mother escaped the Holocaust in 1942 after a harrowing, six-month journey through Holland, Belgium, and France to get to neutral Switzerland—though much of her family were not so lucky.

My parents instilled in me a deep sense that the world is full of good people—and evil people, too. Americans—who liberated a continent beset by two internecine wars, supported a massive economic reconstruction effort through the Marshall Plan, and offered the security of a strong alliance—were good people. But evil inhered in the human condition—an evil that could turn neighbors into traitors and collaborators and cultivate hatred to the point of exterminating an entire people.

Coming out of the war, my father studied and then devoted his entire professional life to understanding why democratic systems can fail. He sought to answer the question of how to build strong polities able to resist the kind of anti-democratic movements that had taken hold in Italy in 1922 and in Germany a decade later. He never found a satisfactory answer. He always worried about the inherent feebleness of democracies because they were based on consensus and norms that could and often would be violated with impunity.

That fear affected his many decades of scholarship. And also how he approached life. When the Soviet Union launched a brutal crackdown in Hungary in 1956, he reminded my mother of what her mother had failed to do in the 1930s despite her father’s repeated urging: flee to America before it was too late. My mother, then seven months pregnant with my older brother, declined to leave, saying the danger would not come to the Netherlands because this time America was already here.

She was right, of course, though my father worried the risks were still there. 1968 offered another warning, when Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring, and my father looked for employment opportunities at American universities to move our family of five. That didn’t pan out—but the anxiety about what could happen in Europe remained for a long time.

The idea of America as a haven was instilled in me from my earliest memories. But my faith in America was greater still. To me, America, was a beacon of hope, a country that did great things and often did so for the common good. In my studies, I focused on NATO and European security and learned early on the critical, indeed the indispensable role America played in the world as a stabilizing force in defense of freedom.

Of course, I wasn’t blind to America’s warts—its ugly history of racism, lack of a true social safety net, gun-toting culture, great inequality, and foreign policy blunders. But America is a land of self-correction, where people acknowledge its flaws and where positive change is possible. 

Above all, this is a country based not on ethnic identity, national origin, or religious preference, but on an idea: that all “are created equal” and endowed with the inalienable “right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Its government is “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Its leaders admonish its citizens to “ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” It is seen by many as “a shining city upon the hill.” Here “kings and dictators do not rule. The people do.”

It is governed by a constitution with a bill of rights. It has an independent court system whose purpose is to safeguard the people against infringement by a powerful executive or overbearing legislature. A government of checks and balances to avoid the concentration of power in a single person or governmental branch—built on the insights of philosophers like Locke and Montesquieu. 

Which America?

This is the America I chose. This is the America I believe in and have always wanted to part of.

But the country I chose to make my own is now under threat by another America—a darker America that has always been there but is now closer to power than at any time in the country’s nearly 250-years history. This is an America I did not choose and want no part of.

It’s an America with traits my father warned about. He died in April 2016, but I well remember his warnings about what the rise of Donald Trump—a man with strong authoritarian tendencies, singularly unprepared for high office—could portend for the state of democracy.

The greatest threat to democracy often comes not from outside but from within. The age of conquest, in which democracies foundered through force of arms, ended in Europe with Germany’s defeat in World War II. (Russia’s attempt to resurrect the age, notably in Ukraine, has been bloody and brutal but also a strategic failure—at least so long as we keep our wits and support Ukraine.)

Rather, it’s the erosion of democracy from within that now poses the gravest threat. The model is Italy in the early 1920s, Germany in the early 1930s, Venezuela in the early 2000s, and Hungary today.

History teaches us that democracies founder when a strong, charismatic leader emerges to lead a movement of subservient followers. The leader successfully develops a cult of personality that comes to define the movement or party he leads. Unity and strength are bolstered by identifying a distinct enemy who can be blamed for the people’s social ills and economic plight. “In every society,” Benito Mussolini proclaimed, “there is a need for a part of the citizens who must be hated.” Violence against the enemy forms an essential part of creating and growing the movement and its power. Ultimate victory is made possible by the steady erosion of the norms, rules, and basic rights that are the foundation of democracy.

Democracies like these don’t end suddenly—it happens over time, and many don’t even realize it until it is too late. “Democracy doesn’t die in darkness,” Adam Gopnick rightly observed. “It dies in bright midafternoon light.” Everyone is witness to the violation of rules, breaking of norms broken, and ignoring of guardrails designed to keep the powerful in check. Yet, all too many ignore or downplay what is happening, telling themselves that “it isn’t so bad” and “it can’t happen here.” But it is and it can.

Trump’s America

We see it here, in America—more clearly today than when Trump started his quest for national power and glory nine years ago. Trump presents himself as uniquely strong and uniquely capable, a “very stable genius” who “alone can fix it”—no matter what it is. Nothing underscored his strength more than surviving an assassin’s bullet and the now iconic image of Trump being hoisted by secret service agents, a bloody fist raised high, shouting: “Fight. Fight. Fight.”

Trump’s authoritarian proclivities are well documented. He has said he will be a dictator on “day one” and favored “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” He refused to accept his defeat at the polls in 2020, instead inciting a mob to storm Congress to prevent the certification of the election he had lost by more than seven million votes. And he has openly revered actual dictators like Vladimir Putin (whom he has called a “strong leader,” “savvy,” and a “genius”) and Xi Jinping (whom he has called “an exceptionally brilliant individual who governs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist,” as if this is in anyway admirable).

None of this matters to his followers. To the contrary. Their devotion to the leader is absolute—much like “an opioid for the masses,” as J.D. Vance presciently observed before he himself succumbed to addiction. Trump’s MAGA movement has effectively taken over the Republican Party—with red hats replacing black and brown shirts as the visible token of belonging. In Milwaukee earlier this summer, the GOP adopted a MAGA document as its platform. Written in the disjointed style of Trump’s social media exclamations and capitalization, its policy prescriptions are all but unrecognizable to any Reagan-era Republican. Milwaukee was “less a convention than a convocation,” Maureen Dowd observed, “a MAGA congregation beatifying Trump.”

Within this MAGA movement there is no room for dissent or differing voices. Anyone who dares to oppose Trump is either ostracized—none of the party’s previous presidential and vice-presidential nominees were welcome in Milwaukee—or, like Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Mitch McConnell, sheepishly return to the fold.

Like any wannabe fascist, as Federico Finchelstein calls these authoritarian strongmen, Trump and his movement regard violence as an essential part of their cause. From Charlottesville’s KKK rally to the Proud Boys and Three Percenters ransacking the Capitol, violence and the threat thereof have become essential to targeting the opposition—the radical left and communist traitors who are destroying our country. Only Trump can defeat “them” (whomever “they” are). He is the country’s savior, its last best hope, before the nation collapses or disintegrates because of the enemies that are destroying it—enemies from the outside and in.

From outside, immigrants are streaming into the country by the millions. “The greatest invasion in history is taking place right here in our country,” Trump regularly exclaims. “They’re coming from prisons. They’re coming from jails. They’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums.” Immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump notes, echoing Hitler’s racist creed in Mein Kampf. And this enemy threatens Americans with a wave of crime, lower wages and higher unemployment, and even with stealing elections.  

From inside, the enemy is an elite that scoffs at the common man and relies on a deep state to undermine the will of the people and those rightfully chosen to represent them. The mainstream media lies about what is happening by feeding an unrelenting slew of falsehoods and disinformation. And the Democratic party and its leadership are not only incompetent but “un-American” and “treasonous.”

Trump will end these enemies. He will seal off the border and redeploy the military from abroad to defend against the invasion at home. He will forcefully deport the 10-15 million people living and working in the United States without documentation. He will clean up the streets and eradicated the crime-infested Democratic cities. He will regain power and get rid of the enemies within. “We will demolish the deep state,” he promised supporters in New Hampshire. “We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake-news media. [And] we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”

Those who hope or expect that democratic institutions like Congress and the Courts will stop Trump once he’s back in power will be disappointed. He will dominate and transform the Executive into an organization singularly focused on doing his bidding—firing those who stand in his way and elevating those who’s loyalty to the leader has been demonstrated and established. And he will call up the troops to get the job done.

A Congress of his own party will not stand in his way; when it tries, he will either ignore or override it. As for the Courts, his four years as president have already reshaped them—including the Supreme Court, one-third of whose members he appointed and now constitutes an activist court that often does his bidding. In what is perhaps the most important case on presidential power in half a century, the Court’s Republican-appointed majority ruled in Trump vs. United States that presidents, unique among Americans, enjoy broad immunity from criminal prosecution for their official acts, which could include trying to overturn the outcome of a presidential election. As Justice Sonya Sotomayor argued in her bitter dissent, the Court’s ruling effectively renders the president “a king above the law.”

Even if the Court were to rule against him, Trump might well take JD Vance’s advice and ignore it. After all, it is the executive that enforces the courts’ decisions; and the executive can and has at times refused. Trump would no doubt follow Andrew Jackson, one of his presidential heroes, who defied a Court ruling in 1832. “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it,” Jackson is said to have responded, though that story is probably apocraphyl.

Trump has declared this the most important election in history. “2024 is our final battle.” The key is winning the battle of 2024—to regain power. Once in power, the enemies will be vanquished. “It’ll be fixed.” That is why Trump is exhorting his followers to “get out and vote! Just this time.” Because once back in power, “you won’t have to vote anymore.”

On this point, Trump is absolutely right. This election is existential for America’s future. It’s the most important election since at least 1860, and perhaps since the founding of the republic itself. Democracy is at stake. America is at stake.

As an American, I will stand for democracy and will do everything I can to defend democracy and help it succeed. I know I am not alone. There are millions of Americans who understand what is at stake—and millions more who can be convinced that their vote matters. But I worry that all too many Americans have succumbed to the Trumpian cult, either accepted him as the savior against our enemies or convinced themselves that it’s mostly talk, and it won’t be so bad if he wins. That is how democracy in America can die.

Saving America’s Democracy

While I share my father’s apprehensions about what might be, I share my mother’s confidence about what can be.

The apprehension comes from our political system, which over time has enabled a minority to hold increasing sway over power. In the Senate, the filibuster, once exceptional and used for the most exigent circumstances, has evolved into an effective minority veto of virtual all legislation. The Senate itself exacerbates the power of a minority of voters, by granting each state the same number of senators irrespective of their populations. The House makes it worse. The number of representatives in the House has remained the same for more than 100 years, even though the U.S. population has tripled in size since then. Partly as a result, the electoral college that elects the president, has become unbalanced—with two of the last six presidents winning despite losing the popular vote. The same imbalance prevails in the nation’s highest court, where two-thirds of the Justices have been appointed by Republican presidents, even though Republicans sat in the Oval Office just 12 out of the last 32 years. This “minoritarian stranglehold,” as Darren Walker has aptly called it, has weakened our democracy and alienated all too many from politics—seeding the ground for a deeply authoritarian movement to come uncomfortably close to power.

And, yet, I remain confident that democracy in America will survive, if not thrive. While too many Americans have fallen sway to Trump’s authoritarianism, a majority of Americans have not. Though the country is divided, Democrats have won more votes in seven out of the last eight presidential elections. Joe Biden’s courageous decision to put country above self not only stands in stark contrast to so many elected officials who have put Trump and party above country, but it now gives the nation its best chance to save democracy.

With victory, reform to strengthen our democracy is possible—even without amending the constitution. A majority in the Senate can decide to reform the filibuster and limit its use to the most exceptional circumstances. Congress can decide to increase the size of the House to reflect a growing population. It can also end gerrymandering, guarantee uniform ballot access, promote secure elections, and counter big money in politics. And it can reform the Supreme Court by adopting term limits and regularize appointments so that every president has an opportunity to appoint an equal number of justices each term.

Some will no doubt decry such necessary reforms as “undemocratic” and “unconstitutional.” In fact, these reforms would end the tyranny of the minority and restore majoritarian rule. It will force a change in our politics from the hate-filled vitriol of the last few decades to a vigorous competition for the majority in our elections. In a two-party system like ours, with districts drawn by nonpartisan commissions, that means a search for votes at the center rather than the extremes. We the people of the United States are the ultimate arbitrars of democracy. There is no better guarantee to saving it than making politicians fight for the majority of their support at the voting booth.

America is far from perfect. But its undeniable strength inheres in its moto: E Pluribus Unum. America’s exceptionalism, Barack Obama reminded us, lies not on how perfect we are as a nation but how committed we are to strive, day and night, to forming a more perfect union. And that is why I chose to be an American.