Sure. And when the Athenians recalled Alcibiades [1] or put Socrates to death, that was democratic. I’m not arguing it’s not democratic. I’m arguing those were self-destructive acts that show the system didn’t work.
Note that I’m making a distinctly illiberal argument. In that, I dovetail with Trump’s supporters.
Voters being able to override elite consensus to effectuate change to make the country more like what they want is the system working!
If immigration were the only thing this administration were doing we wouldn’t be having this debate.
The system isn’t working. We’re deterministically heading towards a world where we’re poorer and less secure based on policies (tariffs on Europe, Canada and Mexico) and people (Lutnick, Hegseth) that weren’t ever brought up in the election. Even if that had been campaigned on, the fact that the majority chooses stupid policies is an indictment of electoral politics. If the system “working” leads to its own destruction, it doesn’t work.
And that's certainly liberal - that is the same foundation of classical liberalism and modern left-wing liberalism.
It's absurd to suggest otherwise; it's pointless arguments about verbiage. Nobody wants mob rule, nobody thinks of democracy without human rights and indvidual freedom, either scholars or the general public.
> It’s about people being able to vote to live in the kind of society they want.
Why should they get to decide en masse what people do individually? That's just dictatorhip of the majority, of the mob. Freedom is what the US and democracy are about.
> Democracy is not about free trade, or protecting immigrants, or the like.
It is; it's about freedom.
There’s a reaction throughout the entire west to free trade and immigration. In America, a plurality of voters supported the guy who promised mass deportations and tariffs, and now they’re getting exactly what they voted for. Maybe they won’t like the results, maybe they’ll be thrilled with them. The results will simply inform the next vote. What’s deeply broken are european systems that are trying to maintain liberalism at the expense of democracy.
But not all the european countries. Denmark and Sweden have retrenched on liberalism in the area of immigration—Denmark’s youngest generation is now more Danish than the population as a whole—and have largely solved the political polarization over the issue. That’s democracy working very well.