Tag: Ziblatt

Democracy is Norm Erosion

Two or three weeks ago, I had an intuition, a glimpse of a thought that I pushed away from consciousness but which has kept coming back to me since: The discourse of norm erosion isn’t really about Trump. Nor is it about authoritarianism. What it’s really about is “extremism,” that old stalking horse of Cold War liberalism. And while that discourse of norm erosion won’t do much to limit Trump and the GOP, its real contribution will be to mark the outer limits of left politics, just at a moment when we’re seeing the rise of a left that seems willing to push those limits. That was my thought. And now we have this oped by Steven Levitsky and Daniel […]