How democracies die

It’s only recent history that the mind’s eye can still picture a then-spry Lech Walesa scaling fences and leaping atop platforms to lead the rallying cry of “Solidarnosc!” (Solidarity) in Poland’s fight against Russian tyranny.

Walesa was a union shipyard worker whose out-sized mustache matched his energy to fight oppression beginning in the late 1970s. The Solidarity movement was instrumental in breaking communism’s grip across the Soviet bloc of Eastern Europe.

After its fall, Walesa was democratically elected Poland’s first president. In 1983, he was awarded the Nobel Peace prize.

That the Solidarity movement could be instrumental in overthrowing Big Brother opened our eyes to not only the power of conviction, but also, like the Vietnam War, the difference television made in shaping world events. Walesa was our hero, too.

The movement has, sadly, lost its momentum. After three decades of democracy, today’s leaders are on a nationalistic course determined to weaken democratic norms. Threats of leaving the “Westernized” European Union have many Poles worried that ultra-conservatives are intent on returning their country to authoritarian rule where a system of checks and balances is undone.

The most recent example was the purging of the government’s judicial branch as of midnight Tuesday by decree of Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, who has vested within himself the power to replace those ousted.

Duda’s party, Law and Justice, has also demanded Poland’s history, including its break from communism, be rewritten.

And that’s how democracies fall.

SO WHAT’S it got to do with us?

It’s a reminder that nothing is static, including a democracy.

And that a democracy’s death typically happens in piecemeal fashion.

In Kansas, legislators have recently attempted to undermine our judicial branch of government. In 2015, legislators threatened to defund the entire state court system. In 2016, the Kansas Senate passed a bill declaring that our Supreme Court justices could be impeached if, essentially, their decisions ran counter to that of legislators’ and were deemed an infringement of their power.

And earlier this year legislators proposed an amendment to the constitution that would strip the high court from hearing school funding cases.

Even though all these measures ultimately failed to advance, several Republican candidates continue to espouse their merits, including Kris Kobach in his quest to be governor.

If passed, the amendment to the constitution issue would give legislators the sole authority to determine how to fund our schools. The fear is that such funding would be determined by what the budget allows, not by what is necessary for an adequate education.

Kobach contends that such a measure is necessary to stop “unelected judges from hijacking the Legislature’s power.”

First off, just because someone is elected to office is not a marker of superior decision-making. Secondly, the purpose of our three branches of government is to prevent obstruction of justice. And when one branch usurps the powers of another — such as in Poland’s case where its president is stacking the courts with justices who will follow his beck and call — then democracy is in swift decline. Laws will be rewritten to favor a select few. Discrimination will go unchecked. The people will lose their voice.

THESE ARE lessons democracies must keep learning because the default, unfortunately, is chaos.