America Does Have a Way to Save Itself
Many critics believe that “defensive democracy” has no place in the American system, but it does, and in fact the country has put it to good use throughout history.
In 1868, Senator Waitman Willey, of the newly formed antislavery state of West Virginia, stood on the floor of Congress to argue for the proposed Fourteenth Amendment’s provision disqualifying former Confederate officers from holding office in the recently reunified country. He asserted that the proposal was “a measure of self-defense.” He evidently felt this argument to be so crucial that it required repeated emphasis and explanation. He expanded, “Being a permanent provision of the Constitution, [the provision] is intended to operate as a preventive of treason hereafter by holding out to the people of the United States that such will be the penalty of the offense if they dare to commit it.” He repeated,
