The "not a democracy" crowd is engaged in a dishonest bait and switch where reasonable limits on majority on rule are used to justify more expansive assaults on democratic rights and norms. 1/8 https://twitter.com/SenMikeLee/status/1314089207875371008

Most agree that liberal democracy requires some limits on what majorities can do, so that they do not run roughshod over the rights and welfare of minorities. And the US system has plenty of mechanisms that check majority rule which we consider consistent with democracy. 2/8

But if that's what Lee and co. mean, they should be furious at, say, Gov. Abbott's use of his power to make it harder to vote in urban areas. This is exactly the kind of abuse of majority power to disenfranchise the minority that defenders of limited government should decry. 3/8

The same goes for other efforts by GOP state legislatures, some built on gerrymandered electoral minorities, to erect barriers to voting. 4/8

Likewise, defenders of a "constitutional republic" should be opposed to politicization of the DOJ, the use of extrajudicial force against protestors, and the rise of armed militias acting as unaccountable muscle for the state. 5/8

But notice how the 2A people, who argued that private gun ownership is an essential check on a tyrannical government, turned out on the side of the state when it repressed protests against extrajudicial killing by police. Weird, huh? 6/8

So the "not a democracy" argument for reasonable checks on tyranny of the majority is being perverted to give blessing to a wider array of policies that take us in an authoritarian direction. 7/8

And it shouldn't be surprising, since "not a democracy" is an expansive category that includes a lot of very ugly systems. There is no guarantee that anti-democratic rhetoric stops at a happy place. 8/8