To remove legitimately elected officials from the chamber to which voters sent them is nothing short of authoritarianism.
...Disenfranchisement of liberal voters is nothing new in the state of Tennessee, but what the G.O.P is trying to do to these Democrats goes well beyond disenfranchisement. To remove legitimately elected officials from the chamber to which voters sent them — and to do so precisely because those officials were representing the wishes of voters — is nothing short of authoritarianism. And the Republican supermajority in the Tennessee General Assembly has the votes to do it.
Still, I can't help but hope that Tennesseans will protest the precedent their leaders are about to establish. I still have hope that voters, even Republican voters, will contact their legislators today, in time to make at least some of them stop and reconsider what they are poised to do.
What Tennessee Republicans may think of Mr. Jones, Ms. Johnson and Mr. Pearson is far less important than what Tennessee Republicans may think about American democracy. Because democracy does not exist in a state where officials can be sent home for nothing more than voicing the opinions of voters who are pounding on the statehouse door, demanding to be heard.
In fundamental ways, none of this is surprising. Twenty-first-century Republicans are always demonstrating a truth that the Roman historian Tacitus understood back in the first century: It is part of human nature to hate someone you have hurt. In refusing to expand Medicaid, in attempting to replace public schools with private charters, in disenfranchising Democratic voters, in persecuting L.G.B.T.Q. citizens and demonizing school librarians, in stripping bodily autonomy from Tennessee women and in failing to protect us all from gunfire, they are telling us exactly how they feel about the people they represent... Margaret Renkl
...Disenfranchisement of liberal voters is nothing new in the state of Tennessee, but what the G.O.P is trying to do to these Democrats goes well beyond disenfranchisement. To remove legitimately elected officials from the chamber to which voters sent them — and to do so precisely because those officials were representing the wishes of voters — is nothing short of authoritarianism. And the Republican supermajority in the Tennessee General Assembly has the votes to do it.
Still, I can't help but hope that Tennesseans will protest the precedent their leaders are about to establish. I still have hope that voters, even Republican voters, will contact their legislators today, in time to make at least some of them stop and reconsider what they are poised to do.
What Tennessee Republicans may think of Mr. Jones, Ms. Johnson and Mr. Pearson is far less important than what Tennessee Republicans may think about American democracy. Because democracy does not exist in a state where officials can be sent home for nothing more than voicing the opinions of voters who are pounding on the statehouse door, demanding to be heard.
In fundamental ways, none of this is surprising. Twenty-first-century Republicans are always demonstrating a truth that the Roman historian Tacitus understood back in the first century: It is part of human nature to hate someone you have hurt. In refusing to expand Medicaid, in attempting to replace public schools with private charters, in disenfranchising Democratic voters, in persecuting L.G.B.T.Q. citizens and demonizing school librarians, in stripping bodily autonomy from Tennessee women and in failing to protect us all from gunfire, they are telling us exactly how they feel about the people they represent... Margaret Renkl
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