The way politicians attempt to garner our votes during an election campaign reveals a great deal about what they think of us as people.

Consider how many politicians try to shore up their standing in the polls by tapping into the emotions of fear and greed. Of the two, playing on personal and communal fear often takes precedence — not least because it is such an easy path to follow. A skilled politician will know how to exploit vulnerability by highlighting what is precarious about our situation and then offer a solution. They will identify an “enemy” who means to cause us harm, and then claim that only they can keep us safe. They will accentuate the differences between “us” and “them” so that they can present themselves as being “on our side”.

The trick is to start with a grain of truth. People are vulnerable. There are some who mean us harm. The community is often divided across boundaries of class, religion, culture, ethnicity and ideology. Next, take that grain of truth and turn it into a mountain that dominates our view of the world. Having ramped up the fear, the skilled politician then offers to come to the rescue — this time eliciting a sense of relief, even gratitude.

An appeal to greed is less dramatic — and often less potent. It is based on the assumption that most people will put self-interest ahead of a concern for others. As Jack Lang, the former Premier of New South Wales, once put it to a young Paul Keating, “Always back the horse named self-interest, son. It’ll be the only one trying.” So, a politician will often promise some kind of personal benefit — usually not to those who might most need what is on offer, but to those whose votes will deliver political victory.

But of course, there is nothing inevitable about politicians appealing to emotions like fear and greed. Such appeals have become part of the political playbook for one simple reason: they work. Campaign strategists are, after all, the ultimate pragmatists, and they would not routinely employ the tactics they do unless they had good reason to believe that they will prove successful.

The message we receive from politicians who resort to such tactics is that they do not believe voters are able to rise above what is base and ignoble.

Which is to say, they do not think of us capable of responding, with equal vigour and commitment, to a style of politics that appeals to something more noble in our character. Indeed, even when the negative tactics work with us, even if we succumb to fear or greed and cast our vote for those who appealed to the lowest common denominator, many of us are left feeling somewhat debased. The persistent question remains: “Is that really all that you think of us? Wasn’t there anything better in us to which you could have appealed?”

That is a very fair and serious question. The core tenet of a democracy is that all power and authority derives from “the people”. But what will be the quality of our democratic polity when the mirror held up to the community by its political leaders presents such a wretched image?

I do not pretend that Australians are an especially virtuous people. We are just as flawed as others — neither more nor less. Which means there are ample opportunities to appeal to what Abraham Lincoln called, in his first inaugural address, “the better angels of our nature”. Why is it not a staple of political discourse to offer a vision of shared prosperity? Why not dwell more on common security based on an account of social cohesion as a positive good, rather than as an antidote to division?

This style of politics — one grounded in hope and inclusion — is much harder work than the politics of deficit and division. But I think the effort is worth making because, at the end of an election cycle, we should be left feeling better about ourselves — both as individuals and as a society. That positive effect should be what every politician seeks to generate. Yes, they want to win, but I would hope it is not “win at any cost”. The ends never justify the means, in the crude sense some people argue to defend the indefensible.

Within a democracy, the outcome of elections ultimately lies in the hands of citizens. We are all equal at the ballot box. We are all able to weigh up the merits of what the candidates for public office put before us. In doing so, I think we should look behind the slogans to consider what underlying message is being conveyed. Do those seeking power hold us in high regard? Do they demonstrate that they recognise the good in us to which they then appeal? Or is their underlying message that they hold us in contempt — diminishing us even as they harvest our vote?

This article was originally published by ABC religion and Ethics.

Image by Jun Li / Alamy Stock Photo

Is it fair that some people have more money than they can possibly spend while others are struggling to pay for essentials? It depends on what you mean by “fair”.

There’s never been a better time to be a billionaire. An Oxfam report released last week reveals that billionaires around the world have added a tidy $3.2 trillion to their wealth in 2024 alone. To put that in context: on average, each billionaire expanded their wallet by 3.2 million bucks every day over the last 12 months. That’s a tidy $400,000 an hour, or over 6,000 times the median hourly rate. 

If you believe that innovation and hard work ought to be well rewarded, you might not be perturbed by these numbers. Except that the Oxfam report found that around 60 percent of the wealth captured by billionaires didn’t come from their labour, but was handed to them via an inheritance, or was secured through cronyism, corruption or their ability to exert monopoly power. So, there’s also never been a better time to have ultra-rich parents, or to have enough power to tilt the playing field in your favour. 

Meanwhile, millions of hard-working people are struggling with cost-of-living pressures while their wages have stagnated. It’s probably no surprise that the phrase “every billionaire is a policy failure” – coined in another Oxfam report from 2023 – is having another surge in popularity. 

But is the existence of billionaires itself a bad thing? Or is the existence of poverty the real problem? Should we change the way our economy works to make it impossible for someone to accrue that much money and power? Should we spread some of that wealth around to people who didn’t happen to be born with wealth and privilege? 

These are not new questions. Ever since human societies started to accumulate wealth, inequality has been a hot topic for philosophers. But questions about inequality are fundamentally questions about fairness. The problem is that there are different ideas about what is fair. 

Just deserts

One way to think about fairness is in terms of what someone deserves. Intuitively, if someone is talented, works hard and produces things that other people want, then they ought to be rewarded for doing so. A society that operates this way is often called a “meritocracy”.  

This approach is often used to justify the vast wealth accrued by billionaires; presumably they’ve earnt their wealth because they’ve worked harder and smarter than most, and produced things that society wants or needs. And, on the flip side, many people assume that someone who’s living in poverty must be lazy or they made some dumb decisions, so they deserve their lot too. 

But things aren’t so simple. Is it talent that we’re rewarding? Or is it effort? Or one’s contribution to society? Because what someone deserve differs depending on which we focus on. 

If we focus on talent, then it’s clear that the world isn’t a level playing field. Some people are genetically endowed with higher intelligence, imagination or tenacity, or they’re born into a family that can afford a top-class education, all of which can give that person a huge boost to their talent. And, if they haven’t earnt any of those advantages, we might be reluctant to say they’ve earnt the disproportionate benefits that accrue because of them. 

If we focus on effort instead, then the harder someone works, the more they deserve in return for their labour. Setting aside the question of whether tenacity is to some degree genetic, by this logic, someone who works long hours doing two jobs – as do many people to make ends meet – ought to be paid more than someone who earns a passive income from huge investments or a trust fund, let alone the significant proportion who were just handed their fortune.  

Perhaps we should focus on contribution instead. Not all work is created equal. Some work only benefits the worker rather than society as a whole, and some is outright destructive or harmful. That brings us to the idea that people ought to be rewarded for what they offer society as a whole. No doubt, many billionaires own or head companies that produce things that people want. But is their personal contribution to society proportionate to the huge salaries they demand or the value of their share portfolio? Is a CEO really contributing more than hundreds of workers who actually produce the products and services? Many people would say no. 

There are also many people performing essential jobs, like nursing, teaching and aged care, who are paid a lot less than people who just shuffle stocks around or who produce things like cigarettes or fast food, which are known to cause harm. 

And there are plenty of people living in poverty who made all the right decisions in life but ended up unlucky. They’ve worked hard, taken risks – as all good entrepreneurs do too – and it just didn’t pay off, or they were struck by some illness or disability that prevented them from hitting the big time. 

Libertarianism

There is another avenue of argument that has been used to justify the wealth of billionaires: libertarianism. American philosopher Robert Nozick argued that people have a fundamental right to own and trade property, and as long as they do so according to principles of justice, then they can accumulate as much as they want. In fact, taking someone’s property away and giving it to someone else, such as through taxation and welfare spending, is unjust. 

Nozick’s argument harkens back to one offered by the English philosopher John Locke. Locke argued that raw natural resources, like land or minerals, start off belonging to no-one, and while they’re left idle, they’re worth nothing. But as soon as someone claims some natural resources (provided there’s still some left for others) and works or improves them to produce value, then they deserve to keep that value. 

The problem is whether those who have amassed great fortunes today actually acquired their original property justly.

If it turns out that the property or resources they are using to generate wealth were appropriated from others, such as through conquest or colonialism, or if others were not given the same opportunity to put a fence around their own bit of nature, then the billionaires have received an unjust and unfair advantage.  

Egalitarianism

If it’s the case that the world isn’t a level playing field, then perhaps we should focus less on what people currently have and do, and focus more on what they are owed as human beings. This brings us to egalitarianism. The most radical version states that every person, having fundamentally equal moral worth, has an equal right to share in what their society produces. According to this view, then everybody would have basically the same amount of wealth at all times.  

However, this might not feel satisfactory if it means that people get the same amount regardless of whether they work hard or not at all, or whether they contribute to society or just laze around the beach.  

Economists have also argued that a world where everyone has the same amount of stuff would be substantially less productive than a world where people are able to accumulate more resources and be rewarded for innovating and investing them efficiently. So, a world with perfect equality might see everyone living in poverty, while a world with some inequality might generate so much more wealth that everyone would, in principle, be better off. 

This has led to yet another approach, called the “difference principle”, which was advocated by the American political philosopher John Rawls. Rawls argued that we should allow some inequality, but only if those inequalities end up benefiting the least advantaged people in society. So, it doesn’t matter if a few people accrue billions, as long as it means that the poorest people also benefit to some degree. One might imagine Rawls saying: “every billionaire is a policy failure as long as there are people in poverty”. 

What’s fair?

No matter which way you think about fairness, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to justify the existence of billionaires in a world where millions of people are struggling to satisfy their basic needs.  

However, while our economic system is geared to generate the maximum possible wealth, if we leave it alone to do its thing, inequality is likely to continue to surge. The challenge of tempering inequality falls into the political sphere, with mechanisms like taxation and welfare spending being highly effective at spreading wealth and opportunity around.  

The problem is that those who are the beneficiaries of the current system – i.e. the billionaires – have a strong vested interested in preserving the status quo in order to maintain their wealth and lavish lifestyles. And it certainly helps their cause that wealth buys power and influence on the political level, as described in the Oxfam report. 

Even if we can solve the question of how best to distribute wealth in our society, which is no easy task, we are still faced by an even harder question of how to change the system to make it just. 

In September 2016, just before that year’s United States presidential election, The Claremont Review of Books published an essay that became an instant classic. It was titled “The Flight 93 Election”, and its message was stark. If voters didn’t rush the cockpit and come out for Donald Trump in numbers, then traditional values and American interests would be flown into the ground. “If you don’t try, death is certain”, was its rallying cry.

Why were conservatives so scared? Their panic reflected a real insight: for decades, liberalism — its moral values and sensibilities — had been gaining traction in American (and, more broadly, Western) culture. The worry wasn’t so much about liberalism taking over politics. On paper, at least, and despite gross and systemic failures, the United States has always been a constitutional liberal democracy. The problem was the slow and steady creep of liberal values into areas of life completely remote from politics. As a prominent conservative scholar put it:

“Liberalism is thus not merely, as is often portrayed, a narrowly political project of constitutional government and juridical defence of rights. Rather, it seeks to transform all of human life and the world.”

I’m a liberal and I believe conservatives are absolutely right on this point. Liberalism is hegemonic and liberals are the hegemons of the Western world. But that hegemony won’t last if we keep carrying on as we are.

If I had to sum up the 2024 election in a headline, it would be: “This Just In: Actually Existing Liberalism Sucks”. Liberalism is an ideology rooted in a core moral concept — fairness. It’s easy to lose sight of how extraordinary liberalism is. It teaches every single one of its members that they matter, and that every citizen, you and me included, has a legitimate expectation to be treated reasonably and fairly by the basic institutions of society. Fairness and reciprocity for all are the radical moral adventure of liberalism, and I believe it is a beautiful ideal capable of inspiring the enduring support of large majorities.

The trouble is that liberals in most liberal democracies — maybe even especially in the United States — do two things that almost seem designed to inspire resentment: they fail to take inequality seriously, and they moralise.

Consider how many times we heard the term “vibecession” in the run-up to the election. It played nonstop in The New York Times, essentially gaslighting the American public into believing that the cost of living was in their heads or, at worst, a thing of the past. But as Bernie Sanders posted on X, and reiterated in a justifiably prickly post-election podcast with the Times, “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”

History has much to teach us on this point. Late in life, Alexis de Tocqueville — the greatest booster of American democracy — wrote an extraordinary post-mortem on the collapse of a social and political order called The Ancien Régime and the Revolution (1856). His key insight is especially relevant today: a regime is doomed the moment it begins to be hated on a micro-level, when grievances become embedded in the interactions and practices of everyday life. “F**k you”, the average person might think when eggs cost twice as much, or “Jesus Christ!” when the inspection line for a sub-par two-bedroom apartment stretches around the block.

The United States is not unique in this respect. In fact, every single government in the Western democratic world that has faced an election recently has been replaced — whether they’ve switched from liberal to conservative or conservative to liberal. But liberalism, which prides itself on fairness and equal opportunity, is especially vulnerable to this kind of resentment when it falls short of its promises.

Which brings me to the second point of liberal folly: we moralise. Once again, let me pick on the standard bearer of correct liberal opinion, The New York Times. In the two weeks following the election — though, honestly, I could have picked any week within the past ten years — it ran two opinion pieces, one from the right and one from the left wings of its liberal factions, that exemplify the problem rather than the solution. From the right, David French argues that Trump’s 2025 administration is already poised to implode under the weight of its own incompetence and corruption. From the left, Roxane Gay declares a moral imperative to reject the Republican worldview entirely, writing, “We must refuse to participate in a mass delusion”.

Come on. Liberals just got their asses handed to them two weeks ago. Our first impulse cannot be to scold and denounce — that’s exactly why liberals are hated. We can be snobs, and snobbery is one of the worst traits imaginable. It’s a particular kind of pleasure rooted in making inequality felt and hurt. If that’s the only solace liberals can offer themselves right now, we’re in serious trouble. The cockpit liberals need to rush isn’t the wider electorate but an elite orthodoxy that insists it has all the practical and moral answers.

What should liberals do? First, we need to chill. Liberalism remains culturally and politically hegemonic in the West, and Rome wasn’t destroyed in a day. Second, we need to pivot. People will, of course, have different opinions about the way forward. But if I could issue a categorical imperative for liberals, it would be this: keep striving for a country built for everyone, and don’t talk down to those who think differently. Third, we need to listen. To tip my own hand, the best proposal I’ve heard for how liberals should regroup comes from Sohrab Ahmari — himself no friend of liberalism — in a post on X. Here it is in full:

“Imagine a left without the freaky pronoun brigade; that’s reasonably restrictionist on the border (where most voters are); that backs policing and caters to sociality instead of the antisocial; but at the same time is populist on the economy. That’s … pretty attractive.”

That sounds like Trumpism, some would say. I think not, but this isn’t the place to make my case.

The point is that liberals must stop retreating into smugness and start confronting the realities that have alienated so many. Liberalism’s promise of fairness is worth fighting for, but only if we’re willing to embody it, not just preach it.

If we want to hold onto this hegemony of ours, we need to act like it’s worth saving. And that means changing — fast.

This article was originally published by ABC Religion and Ethics.

Image by Andreas Praefcke.

Work hard, play by the rules and you will have a successful and good life. Or so we’re told. Trump’s recent Presidential victory says a lot about how democracy has failed us.

It’s been a few days since it was announced that Donald Trump would be returning to the Oval Office after winning a decisive victory against Vice President Kamala Harris, and it already feels like 2016 again. Like then, many people are straining to make sense of how a man they deem to be morally bankrupt could have secured the votes of over 72 million Americans. 

There will likely be pools of ink spilt attempting to explain the political and economic factors that returned Trump to the White House. But I want to view this moment through a broader moral lens. Because, while Trump’s first victory in 2016 might have been interpreted as a freak event, where a political outsider disrupted an otherwise healthy and functional democratic society, his second decisive victory suggests there’s something deeper and more pervasive at work – a failure that persists at the core of democratic society that Trump was able to exploit. 

The Grand Bargain

Go to school, behave yourself, study hard, get a job (any job), work hard, pay your taxes and play by the rules. If you do all this, then society will ensure that you will be a success and enjoy a good life. 

That’s what I call the ‘Grand Bargain’ of modern liberal democratic society. It goes by different names, with a different spin, in every democracy through terms like the “American Dream” or the “Great Australian Dream”. But it goes beyond just the idea that opportunity is open to all or that home ownership is a natural step towards financial security. It’s like an implicit agreement between the state and the individual: play by the rules and everything will be OK. 

However, many people in ‘rich’ countries are not OK. I barely need to mention inflation, the rising cost of living, stagnant wages, unaffordable housing, exorbitant rent, the offshoring of jobs, the rise of insecure gig work, the closure of traditional industries and manufacturing, not to mention the fact that corporate profits are skyrocketing and the top 10% are doing better than ever. The Grand Bargain has been under pressure since the 1990s and, arguably, it’s been broken ever since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009. 

And people are angry. This is not just because the failure of the Grand Bargain has resulted in real material disadvantage, but the anger has a moral dimension due to a deep sense of injustice at the failure of the state – especially politically and economically – to live up to its end of the Bargain.

Injustice breeds outrage, and outrage is a moral emotion that creates a desire to punish the perceived wrongdoer. In this case, the perceived wrongdoers are the political ‘elites’ who have been instrumental in promoting economic growth at the expense of the workers within that economy. In most modern liberal democracies, those elites include members of both the Left and the Right, especially since the neoliberal turn of the 1990s. So, over the last two decades, no matter who people vote for, the Grand Bargain has remained broken. 

It doesn’t matter that Trump is part of this elite political class. It doesn’t matter that his policies are little more than a basket of fantasies that will almost certainly worsen the economic circumstances of most of those who voted for him while enriching the super rich even more.

What matters is that Trump has effectively given voice to those who feel that the Grand Bargain has failed, and that it’s politics-as-usual that has let them down.

And what Kamala Harris represented – as did Hillary Clinton before her – was politics-as-usual: a kind of politics that tinkered around the edges by providing small perks to certain groups to offset the huge systemic disadvantages they faced. Meanwhile, they were afraid to enact systemic change because that would require facing off against the powerful vested interests who continue to benefit from the current economic paradigm. 

Identity crisis

But this is not the full picture. The Grand Bargain isn’t just about economics, it’s also about identity. In order to live a good life, we need more than just material prosperity, we also need to have our identity recognised and to experience a sense of pride. 

Whether justified or not, large segments of the population in many liberal democracies have felt that their identity has been under attack. Neoliberal policies have taken away the work that gave them a source of meaning and pride in their lives. Multiculturalism has fragmented their communities, eroding social capital and leaving them feeling unmoored in their own neighbourhoods. 

The recent historical reckoning over colonialism and racism has contributed to a narrative of shame directed at the beneficiaries of systemic discrimination, particularly white people. Similarly, the historical reckoning over sexism has promoted a narrative that many men feel has disempowered them and challenged a core feature of their identity. 

I hasten to add that there is much that modern liberal societies must reckon with. But what’s of importance here is how that reckoning has been perceived by many people, especially at a time when their material circumstances have been increasingly precarious. 

Meanwhile, the ‘elites’ – particularly on the progressive side of politics – led these attacks on identity, policing speech and behaviour, and perpetuating a narrative that expressions of pride in one’s heritage or culture, or any expression of concern about diversity, inclusion or the welfare of men was to be perceived as a form of bigotry. As a result, many people changed the way they spoke and behaved in public, but they didn’t change the way they thought.  

Then along comes Trump. He didn’t change the way he spoke or behaved. He said what many people were thinking. He validated the identities of many people who felt under-recognised. He offered a counter-narrative of pride rather than shame. 

Be bold

When you look at Trump’s victory through the moral lens of outrage directed at the failure of the Grand Bargain and at the narratives that cause people to feel shame, then it makes a lot more sense. 

Trump was uniquely positioned to exploit this outrage, to give voice to the indignance that many Americans feel in being ‘left behind,’ and to offer a narrative of ‘greatness’ that promised to restore their pride.  

It doesn’t matter whether his solutions are the right ones to fix the grievances he’s tapping into. What matters is that he validated public outrage at the failure of the Grand Bargain, and he presents himself as strong enough to do something about it even in the face of powerful vested interests (even if he, and his friends, are those vested interests). 

Those who are concerned about the implications of a second Trump presidency, or who lament the rise of populism in democracies around the world, would do well to shift their attention from blaming voters and direct it towards restoring the Grand Bargain. That is not an easy thing to do. It will likely require facing off against powerful vested interests. But through this moment might come avenues to rectify the deeper failures of modern democratic societies and prevent the rise of populists who recognise those failures but whose solutions only make the problems worse, not better. 

If there’s one lesson that Trump has for all politicians, it’s that if boldness and fearlessness coupled with a commitment to promote the interests of one’s supporters can overcome the many political drags that Trump brought to his campaign, imagine what it could to for someone of principle. 

Unless we want to slip into a world where force and coercion drive politics, then we all must invest in reinforcing the institutions that keep liberal democracy working.

For most of human history, politics was — and in many parts of the world today, still is — a wilderness. Political victories were won at the point of a spear or the barrel of a gun, rather than at the ballot box. When there was a dispute about whose interests ought to take priority, how to distribute resources, or even who gets to have a say in how people live their lives, it was those who wielded the greatest force who typically got to choose. And, unsurprisingly, they often chose in favour of themselves.

This makes liberal democracy an historical anomaly. Within liberal democracy, we fully expect there to be disagreements about how best to run society — not least because the “liberal” part allows each person to define their own vision of a good life rather than having one imposed on us by others. But in liberal democracy, these disagreements are not won through coercive force but through persuasion, or as the German liberal philosopher Jürgen Habermas puts it, “the unforced force of the better argument”.

But the wall of civility surrounding the garden of liberal democracy is not impregnable. Coercive force lingers just outside, threatening to burst in and bypass the messy process of persuasion — as it did on 13 July 2024, when a would-be assassin attempted to silence former President Donald Trump with an assault rifle rather than words.

The good news is that the near universal expressions of shock and condemnation at the attempted assassination show that most people in the United States, and in other liberal democracies, still prefer to resolve their disputes within the norms of the liberal democratic garden rather than returning to the wilderness. Still, this episode serves as a potent reminder of just how fragile and important the norms that preserve liberal democracy are, and that the institutions that enable peaceful political debate require constant reinforcement.

The grand bargain

The problem is that, in recent years, liberal democracy has been failing itself. One of the “unforced forces” that keeps the system operating is a tacit buy-in on behalf of every individual within the system. We need to believe that the system is working for us, that it’s fair, and that our voice matters, otherwise we have little incentive to work within it. If we feel powerless, disenfranchised, embattled or feel our livelihood or safety is threatened, we have more reason to step outside the walls of civility.

But liberal democracies, such as the United States — and to a lesser but nonetheless significant extent, Australia — have often failed to give us good reason to believe the system is working.

For many of us, the “grand bargain” of liberal democratic society is breaking down. This bargain states that if we work hard, get a good education, and play by the rules, then we’ll have every opportunity to live a fulfilled and fulfilling life. But that’s just not the reality for a large proportion of the population. Many liberal democracies are facing an omni-crisis — combining housing, inflation, wealth inequality, climate change, mental health, loneliness, childcare, aging, the erosion of traditional jobs, the fragmentation of communities, as well as racism, sexism and other forms of systemic discrimination, and more besides.

If people feel powerless or disenfranchised, they’ll reject the constraints the system places on them to engage in peaceful debate.

Or if they feel that the stakes are so high that they can’t afford to let the other side win, then they’ll reject the ballot box and turn to other means to achieve their political ends.

How to restore faith in liberal democracy

Of course, those in power must not neglect their responsibility to protect and strengthen the system, and restore the grand bargain, even if they might forego short-term political or financial advantage in doing so.

Although it’s up to us to hold them to account. We should demand more of our elected representatives. But we must demand more of ourselves as well. We must lower the temperature of popular discourse: tune out the hyperbole, avoid partisan media, carefully curate our social media, don’t engage with those promoting conspiracy theories, and refuse to feed the trolls. Listen and ask questions of people who have different opinions. Advance our views with conviction, but also with humility. Acknowledge that there is probably not one right answer to many of the challenges we face, and that compromise is inevitable.

Just as important is building the social foundations that enable civil but spirited discourse. That means investing in our local communities to build “social capital” — the trust, respect, and norms of reciprocity that keep society functioning. Talking to your neighbour over the fence, taking your dog to the park, participating in a class at your local community centre, volunteering for a local organisation, joining an activist group — these are the grassroots of the liberal democratic garden, and they’re just as important as the larger institutions. They reinforce our common humanity; our neighbour might vote differently to us, but we still share the same human concerns.

As American political commentator Yuval Levin has stated, those we disagree with aren’t just going to disappear if we coerce them into silence or bully our way into power. Their views will persist, and if we give them no voice, they will be motivated to find other ways to be heard. We must practice tolerance and compromise, because the alternative is a return to the wilderness.

Catch Democracy is Not Worth Dying For at The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Sunday 25 August at Carriageworks, Sydney. Tickets on sale now.

This article was originally published by ABC religion and Ethics.

It is remarkable that Donald Trump, former US President and presumptive Republican nominee, is alive today.

He survived an assassination attempt at relatively close range, which killed one bystander and serious injured two more. Trump himself was lightly wounded. The photograph of Trump bloodied and bellowing defiance as he is dragged from the stage by Secret Service agents has become the defining picture of this election — and perhaps the state of American democracy. It is a portrait of a demagogue who conjured violence and malice for nearly a decade in American politics only, like the sorcerer’s apprentice, to have these same forces turn against him. It is a portrait of a fracturing republic.

In the aftermath of the assassination attempt there has been universal condemnation of the attack. President Joe Biden addressed the nation declaring in no uncertain terms that there was no place for violence in American politics and that the attack was “sick”.

The condemnations seem platitudinous and empty, however — a slightly more refined form of the “thoughts and prayers” ritually offered in the wake of mass shootings. It also seems to run counter to reality.

Political violence is part of American culture. It birthed the republic in the Revolutionary War. The founding fathers all recognised that, under certain conditions, political violence was both just and necessary.

Many Americans still agree. Just last month, Richard Pape from the University of Chicago found that some 10 per cent of Americans support the use of force to stop Trump from regaining the White House, while 6.9 per cent of Americans would support the use of force to install him. That is some 44 million Americans. Simple attempts to wave political violence away is not sufficient to deal with this problem. There needs to be a serious discussion about when political violence is justifiable.

Is Trump a tyrant?

Blanket condemnations of political violence are frequently unconvincing. This would condemn us to doing nothing in the face of evil. The real discussion is about when such things are permissible. I want to address one particular act of political violence: tyrannicide.

We can distinguish tyrannicide from assassination by saying the former is justifiable political killing and the latter is not. You might say there is no such thing. When I ask my students about whether deliberate killing is justifiable, often most of them do not think it is. The intuition that deliberately taking another person’s life is deeply ingrained, and rightly so, but it does need to be critically examined.

Consider a test case. Reinhard Heydrich was a high-ranking officer in the SS, a chief lieutenant of Adolf Hitler, and one of the prime movers of the Holocaust. On 27 May 1942, Czech and Slovak partisans assassinated him with an improvised bomb. It is difficult to argue that the killing of a man deeply implicated in the coercive imposition of a racist totalitarian regime and industrialised murder of innocent persons is wrong.

There has been significant discourse around the threat Trump poses to American democracy. As president he showed little knowledge or interest in the guardrails against his power, he relentlessly demonised his opponents, and instigated a violent mob to prevent the peaceful transition of power. In the lead up to the 2024 presidential election, little seems to have changed. The poisonous rhetoric continues, he threatens to jail his political opponents, and he has indicated his desire to reshape America into a more authoritarian and theocratic state with his ties to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.

Here, then, is the crux of the problem: Trump seems like a figure bent on hollowing out republican institutions and accumulating arbitrary power in the office of the president, to wield as he pleases. He looks a lot like a Julius Caesar. But does this legitimise a modern Brutus?

The answer is no, but we need to know why.

“An enemy of all humanity”

The bar for tyrannicide must be high and clear. This is for two reasons. The first is simply the categorical value of human life: if murder is not wrong then what is? People like Heydrich forfeit their immunity from violence by committing terrible acts that shock the conscience of humanity. In the past, they would be described as hostis humani generis, an enemy of all humanity. This term was used to describe pirates and those who violated the basic terms of human social cooperation. They were outlaws — quite literally, beyond the protection of the law. People like Heydrich and his master were legitimate targets for tyrannicide because they committed crimes against humanity and in doing so made themselves a threat to all persons. To kill a Heydrich or a Hitler is akin to killing in self-defence or the defence of others. It is justifiable.

There might be some push back. This bar requires crimes against humanity to be committed before an act of tyrannicide — but what if they could be prevented by removing criminals before they act. The problem with this stance is that it creates an almost impossible burden of judgement. Think of John Wilkes Booth. After shooting Abraham Lincoln, he shouted sic semper tyrannis, “thus ever for tyrants”, the call used by the assassins of Julius Caesar. Yet, the judgement of history is that Lincoln, far from being a tyrant, was one of America’s greatest leaders and his murder one of its most profound tragedies. There is no such ambiguity when it comes to the likes of Heydrich or Hitler.

The further reason for having a high bar for tyrannicide is the consequences. One of the reasons Jeremy Bentham was critical of the right to resist oppression was that it left too much to the judgement of individuals and could lead to anarchy if anyone who felt oppressed could turn a knife on the judge who condemns them or the politician who advocates a policy with which they disagree. Those who would use this sort of violence run a terrible risk of breaking democratic systems.

Democracy is almost alchemical in its operation. It can transmute violent dissent into peaceful disagreement. The enemy becomes the rival. How? Because of the “losers’ consent”. The defeated side in a democracy does not resort to violence as they recognise that they may win the next contest. The legitimacy of the system survives electoral defeat. Political violence and assassinations erode this fundamental norm; they signify a withdrawal of consent.

Under these conditions, violence can produce the very outcome it seeks to prevent: a total collapse and a spiral into authoritarianism.

Again, think of those who killed Julius Caesar. They acted to preserve the Roman Republic, but instead they sparked a brutal civil war that eventually produced the Roman Empire.

Political violence of this sort can only be justifiable under the worse conditions. We may find Donald Trump repugnant, but he has not committed crimes against humanity. He is not hostis humani generis. This does not mean, however, that Trump is beyond reproach. His outriders — including his vice-presidential running mate, J.D. Vance — have claimed that democratic rhetoric about the risk Trump poses to American democracy are responsible for the assassination. They are attempting to elevate him the paradoxical state of a living martyr who cannot be criticised.

Setting aside the fact that we still have no notion of what motivated the would-be assassin, this evolution in the Trump cult of personality must be resisted for the sake of democracy. The sad fact is that no one has done more to erode the norms of democracy than the man who was almost killed on that stage in rural Pennsylvania. This cannot be ignored. He must be held to account — but with ballots, not bullets.

Is democracy worth dying for? Find out more at The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, 24-25 August at Carriageworks, Sydney.
David Blunt also chairs The Pitchforks are Coming at The Festival of Dangerous Ideas. Tickets on sale now.

This article was originally published by ABC Religion and Ethics.

Which takes ethical precedence: keeping a promise to remain loyal to your group or sticking to your principles?

This is a question that has faced first-term Western Australian senator, Fatima Payman, repeatedly over the past few weeks. Ultimately, she chose her principles, crossing the floor to vote for a Greens bill calling to recognise Palestinian statehood, and now she’s paying the price for breaking her pledge of caucus solidarity with the Australian Labor Party (ALP). 

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, faced a different dilemma. Even though his party’s National Platform ostensibly supported Payman’s principled position, the fact remains that she broke caucus solidarity by crossing the floor, an act that he was obliged by party rules to punish with a one-week suspension from caucus.  

But then Payman doubled down on her principled stance by stating on national television that she would be willing to cross the floor again should another vote arise on Palestinian statehood. Again, Albanese felt his hand was forced, with him issuing her with an indefinite suspension. 

Payman’s suspension has proven divisive, with many Labor members and supporters expressing outrage that she would violate her sacred pledge of caucus solidarity and draw media attention away from key Labor initiatives, such as the revised stage 3 tax cuts.  

Others, such as the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, have seen events through a different lens, saying it was “disturbed by the suggestion that towing the Labor Party’s line is more important than standing up for the rights and lives of Palestinians as they are slaughtered in Gaza.” 

Ultimately, both Payman and Albanese were placed in an ethical dilemma, with competing obligations pulling them in different directions. However, the episode raises deeper questions about whether politicians should be allowed to vote on matters of conscience or principle, and whether it is justified for a political party to punish them for doing so. 

Ethical tension

When we vote for a politician based on their stated values and principles, we might expect they stand by them and vote accordingly when they’re in parliament. However, that’s often not the case. 

Members of parliament are typically bound to vote for – and publicly support – their party’s agreed position, even if that position contradicts their own. In fact, since its inception in 1891, Labor has maintained a strict policy of caucus solidarity, with members pledging to uphold it as sacrosanct.  

This means Labor members are free to argue forcefully for their views inside caucus meetings, but once the caucus has decided on a position, they are bound to vote for it. This has sometimes put Labor members in a difficult position, such as when Labor Senator Penny Wong was obliged to vote against same-sex marriage in 2008, despite her deep commitment to marriage equality. 

In keeping with its traditional liberal roots, and the notion that it’s a “broad church”, the Liberal Party takes a relatively softer stance, ostensibly allowing members to cross the floor on matters of principle. However, even though the Liberal Party doesn’t require its members to make a pledge of caucus solidarity, they are still strongly encouraged to vote with the party, and often suffer punishment if they go against the party line. 

The exception is when the leadership of a political party announces a “free” or “conscience” vote. These are rare, and are typically related to bills with a strong ethical element, such as abortion, euthanasia or embryonic stem cell research. In these cases, members are released from their obligations to vote with the party. However, over the last few decades the ALP has been less likely to allow a conscience vote than the Liberal Party, and the bill on Palestinian statehood that Payman crossed the floor on was not declared as a conscience vote by Labor. 

Caucus solidarity is often justified in terms of the party being more stable – and more effective in governing – if it works as a collective rather than a group of individuals with diverse views. If every member of parliament were free to vote on any issue, then parties would have to work harder to curry favour with each representative, possibly watering down bills in order to get them on board. That could result in weaker legislation and prevent a party from genuinely being able to enact the policy platform that it presented to the electorate. It would also make it harder to vote for a party platform, knowing that any member might vote against it at any time. 

Still, party solidarity could be seen as a political solution that involves an ethical compromise, not only preventing politicians from voting according to their deeply held views – which might be the very views that got them elected – but also requiring them to act inauthentically by publicly supporting a view they don’t personally hold.

Ultimately, political leaders – Anthony Albanese included – have a choice to make when faced with the dilemma of a sitting member crossing the floor: which is more important, solidarity or principle? And voters have a choice of whether to vote for a candidate, knowing that they might be prevented from voting in accordance with their values and principles.

Ethical protest is a crucial element of liberal democracy. But protesters and universities must tread a fine line to allow good faith expression while preventing unethical forms of speech.

In parallel to the conflict raging in Gaza, another front has emerged in the form of pro-Palestine protest camps at universities across the United States and Australia. 

The protesters have called for a ceasefire in Gaza and for their host universities to sever any connections with defence companies that support Israel’s war effort, including divestment of stock in any companies with ties to Israel. Meanwhile, Jewish lobbies have claimed that the protests are stoking antisemitism and compromising the safety of Jewish students.  

In the US, these camps have triggered a significant, and occasionally violent, backlash from authorities. Both Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles have called in police and riot squads to break them up, leading to hundreds of arrests. Australian campuses have so far refrained from such a forceful response, but there are increasing calls from some voices, to close them down.  

How should universities and other authorities respond to these protests? What kinds of protest are deemed acceptable? Which cross the line and should be shut down? 

Ethical protest

Every citizen of a liberal democracy has the right to protest against injustice. But protesters and authorities must tread a fine line between allowing justified forms of expression while preventing forms that incite, dehumanise, vilify or cause undue disruption or damage to private or public property. 

But what counts as incitement when slogans are interpreted in different ways by different people? What constitutes vilification, when many in the Jewish community perceive criticism of Israel as being antisemitic? Is it undue disruption if a camp prevents uninvolved students from attending their classes? Can a protest movement prevent fringe elements from coopting it to promote extreme views or violence? 

These are difficult questions to answer for both protesters and universities. However, a better understanding of the limits of ethical protest can guide those running the camps to ensure they remain within the bounds of what is justifiable speech, and authorities, so they don’t end up suppressing legitimate forms of expression. 

In good faith

A crucial feature of ethical protest is that protesters are acting in good faith, which means they are acting with the intention to call out what they genuinely believe to be an injustice.  

This means the protesters need to have just cause, and ensure their expression doesn’t stray outside of this justification. In the case of the pro-Palestine camps, there are arguments that can provide just cause, including statements of concern from the United Nations, governments and other world leaders about the impact that the conflict is having on innocent civilians and the lasting damage to infrastructure that could harm future generations of Palestinians who played no part in Hamas’s terrorist attacks of October 2023. 

However, there have been some pro-Palestine protesters who have stepped outside of bounds of this just cause, such as threatening Jewish students or saying Hamas deserves “unconditional support”.  

A major challenge for the pro-Palestine camps is to keep emotions, especially outrage, in check. This is because justifiable outrage and heated emotion against injustice can easily tip over into calls for unjustified retribution against the perceived wrongdoers. While protesters may not intend to carry out any hyperbolic threats they express verbally, they can still service to threaten, intimidate and dehumanise. A sense of solidarity with one’s cause can also lead people to refrain from criticising problematic views or actors within their own “tribe” for fear of appearing disloyal. 

Universities and other authorities are right to clamp down on any individuals who engage in such bad faith forms of expression. However, if protest leaders clearly demonstrate that they repudiate violence and dehumanising claims, and actively police their own ranks, then the universities ought to draw a distinction between the protest movement as a whole and individuals who overstep the line. 

Interpretation

Bad faith expression is complicated by ambiguous slogans, such as “intifada” or “from the river to the sea”. Many people interpret the former as a call for resistance, while others associate it with the Palestinian uprisings starting in the 1980s. And some interpret the latter slogan as a call for peace within the region while others hear it as a call for the elimination of the Israeli state.

It is inevitable that symbols will be interpreted in different ways, and it is impossible to ensure that a symbol will only have one meaning. It’s also impossible to prevent fringe elements from appropriating a symbol and potentially tainting its meaning.  

However, protest organisers can be clear about the intended meaning of symbols, promote good faith interpretations and suppress their use when they overstep into representing a clear threat to others. People perceiving the symbol should also exercise charity in their interpretation, rather than assuming the worst possible interpretation. Only in clear cases where the symbol is being used consistently in a bad faith manner should authorities step in to suppress its use. 

Language matters

Language that is critical of the Israeli government has also been interpreted by some as being inherently antisemitic, and often such criticism has been laced with antisemitic sentiment. However, it is possible in principle to be critical of the Israeli government and its policies without being antisemitic. Were that not the case, then a significant proportion of the Jewish population of Israel would itself be deemed antisemitic due to its strong opposition to the current government’s policies. It is also possible to condemn terrorism and Hamas’ October 7 2023 attacks against civilians and also condemn the scale of collateral damage in Gaza as a result of the Israeli offensive.  

It is important for those critical of the Israeli government to be clear in their use of language to not imply any antisemitic sentiment, just as it is important for those listening to exercise charity in how they interpret such statements. 

Disruption

Many protests cause disruption. Indeed, disruption is sometimes a means to draw attention to an issue that might be otherwise overlooked by the public. However, ethical protest requires that the organisers minimise their impact on bystanders, especially those who are not responsible for the injustice being protested.  

If the disruption becomes disproportionate, or it tips over into serious property damage, then authorities can be justified in placing restrictions on the protest and prosecuting any individuals who are involved in damaging acts. However, authorities must be very careful in how they do so, as targeting the entire protest can end up suppressing legitimate speech and can also backfire, causing more disruption or damage. 

More space for protest, not less

Often the most prudent response to a protest is for universities to give the protesters more space for expression, not less. Despite the demands issued by many protesters, one core goal is often simply to be heard and acknowledged. Even if the other demands, such as divestment, are not met, protesters may still feel satisfied if they are given the space and respect to be seen and heard.  

If universities give the protesters a platform to express their good faith arguments – and equal space for others to oppose them in good faith – and they can manage it safely, then it can take a great deal of pressure off the protest movement, which might otherwise lash out in more destructive ways.

It is also crucial that the protests do not turn violent. One trigger for such violence is overly forceful policing, as we have seen in the United States. By increasing the pressure on protesters, especially if that pressure is exerted by police, who are trained to use force when necessary to achieve their objectives, then protesters can lash out or act in self-defence. This can, in turn, motivate an even more forceful crackdown, leading to a spiral that can end in violence or riots. Better to take the pressure off and give the protesters the space to act peacefully and in good faith rather than set their backs against the wall. 

It is impossible to guarantee that any protest will unfold entirely without cost or error. But as long as the protesters are acting in good faith, with just cause, and if they police their own members to prevent unethical behaviour, then universities ought to give the protesters the space to do so peacefully and with minimal impact.