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.