Today, many in the United States — mostly, but certainly not exclusively, white Christians — claim to be defending themselves and their “values” against decisions by U.S. courts granting rights and preferences to minorities, to women, to the LGBTQ community, to Muslims and other non-Christians, and to immigrants and refugees.
There has always been an element of anti-Americanism in that strand of conservatism, in the sense that it has stood in opposition to the liberal Enlightenment essence of the American founding.
Since the end of the Civil War, the story of the United States has been the continual expansion of rights to more and more groups claiming them, as well as continual resistance to that expansion. When conservatives object to this historical reality, it is to the democratic ideas of the United States' founding documents (Declaration of Independence and Constitution) that they are objecting.
These days, some American conservatives find themselves in sympathy with the world’s staunchest anti-American leaders. As the Trump administration tilts toward anti-democratic forces in Europe and elsewhere, most Americans appear indifferent, at best. In contrast to their near-obsession with communism during the Cold War, they appear unconcerned by the challenge of authoritarianism.
Political theorist Marc Plattner argues that the gravest threat to liberal democracy today is that the “mainstream center-right parties” of the liberal democratic world are being “captured by tendencies that are indifferent or even hostile to liberal democracy.”
The full article is available here
