Since I was a sophomore in Yale College, in 1976, I have studied the process by which democracies die and get turned into dictatorships. One of the key causes of the death of democracy is the criminalization of political disagreements. While politicians love to be able to cast their opponents as being not merely wrongheaded but also crooks, this is a temptation that must be avoided. The jailing of people who one cannot beat in a free and fair election subverts democracy and has led to dictatorship in many democracies.
It has only been 231 years since the French Revolution's Reign of Terror ultimately sent 50,000 people to the guillotine including former King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette. This situation led inevitably to a Napoleonic dictatorship. Americans must resist at all costs traveling down this very same dangerous path.
In his State of the Union address last night President Biden cast himself as the defender of democracy who would jail former President Donald Trump. I criticized President Trump's behavior on January 6, 2021 in scorching terms, and I argued that his second impeachment should end with a verdict of disqualification from holding office in the future. But, I specifically said then, and I continue to believe now, that no former President of the United States should ever be sent to jail because of the effect that doing so would have on the 35% to 40% of the U.S. population has in revering a particular President who may have committed a crime. President Gerald R. Ford's best and most memorable act in office was his simultaneous pardoning of President Richard M. Nixon and of the Vietnam War era draft evaders to heal the country from the poisonous, political atmosphere of the late 1960's and early 1970's.
