Eugene Debs speaking in Canton, Ohio, shortly before his arrest for sedition.

“I now think the United States may well be evolving,” Damon Linker writes at Persuasion, “to become a competitive authoritarian system in which free elections are still held but fall far short of fairness.”

While I often disagree with Linker — I’m a radical libertarian, he’s a conservative-leaning centrist, do the math — I also often agree with his criticisms of Donald Trump, the MAGA wing of the Republican Party, and the faux “populism” they espouse.

But wow. I don’t know that I’ve ever resorted to the Britishism “gobsmacked” to describe my response to an op-ed before. In this case, it’s the only term that really fits.

What happened to the Damon Linker who was born in 1969 and has written on politics for decades … and why has he been replaced with a doppelgänger who, Rip Van Winkle style, apparently fell asleep in the early 1880s and just now woke up?

The whole idea of “fairness” in American elections went out at the end of the 19th century with the introduction of the “Australian” ballot — a government-printed ballot that replaced write-in elections (that is, all American elections prior to 1888).

Naturally, once the government started printing ballots, the government got to decide which candidates could appear on those ballots.

Would it shock you to learn that the two “major” political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, have ever since colluded to ensure that it’s always difficult, and often impossible, for independent and “third party” candidates to compete?

In 1988, those two “major” parties also took over the quadrennial ritual of “presidential debates” from the League of Women Voters, forming the Commission on Presidential Debates and turning those public affairs into bi-partisan — not multi-partisan — beauty contests.

After Ross Perot made it onto the “debate” stage in 1992, the CPD started tweaking its rules. Over the 29 years since, only Republicans and Democrats have been deemed eligible for a share of “debate” screen time.

It’s not difficult to find authoritarianism over that whole history, either.  Herding immigrants and the immigrant-adjacent off to concentration camps is nothing new (ask the Nisei about World War 2). Neither is imprisoning political opponents (Convict 9653, also known as Eugene Debs, ran for president from prison in 1920 after his conviction for speaking against military conscription).

Same play, new cast. Our “competitive authoritarian system in which free elections are still held but fall far short of fairness” is older than any living American … except, perhaps, Rip Van Linker.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY