Democracy Is Equality, and That’s What Terrifies the Fascists
From the beginning, democracy was not built on the fantasy
that all men and women are the same. We are not equal in strength, intellect,
ability, judgment, or education. The founders knew this well. Instead, they
envisioned something radical: that despite our differences, we would all be equal
in power, equal in the right to shape the laws and institutions that govern us.
Equality, in this sense, was the foundation of self-government. It was the core
principle behind the Declaration of Independence, later enshrined in the U.S.
Constitution.
Democracy, then, is not about sameness. It is about shared
sovereignty. It declares that "we the people" are the rulers, not
kings, popes, billionaires, or CEOs. We agreed to bind ourselves to laws we helped
create, enforced by a government that is our servant, not our master. It was
the antidote to monarchy, oligarchy, and autocracy, a government of equals.
And that is precisely what the fascists now fear and fight.
The authoritarian project currently sweeping America,
championed by Trump and detailed in Project 2025, is not about policy. It is
about power. It is about reestablishing hierarchy where democracy demands
equality. It is about returning to a time when a few ruled over many, when
race, gender, wealth, or religion conferred political privilege.
The new autocrats don’t believe in equality. They may pay
lip service to it, but at their core, they are terrified by the idea that the
poor, the immigrant, the Black, the Brown, the female, the queer, the disabled,
all are equal stakeholders in this nation. That is why they attack voting
rights. That is why they suppress books, muzzle teachers, and dismantle public
institutions. That is why they elevate wealth to sacred status and push for a
theocracy that claims divine order as justification for inequality.
They are reviving the lie of natural hierarchy, the idea
that some are born to rule and others to serve. This lie has been repackaged as
"meritocracy," but its essence is as old as feudalism. In their
world, we are returning to lords and peasants, white over Black, rich over
poor, men over women.
But democracy does not survive in such a hierarchy. It
cannot.
We the people is not just a phrase but a declaration of
equality. And if we lose that, we lose everything. Democracy dies not just when
we stop voting, but when we stop believing that we are all equally entitled to
rule ourselves. It dies when we let oligarchs and zealots redefine citizenship
as a privilege rather than a birthright.
The current regime is not just anti-democratic. It is anti-equality.
It yearns for a return to aristocracy, only this time cloaked in religion,
racial superiority, and the unchecked power of capital. It is a monarchy
dressed as populism. It is fascism with a smile.
The answer is not to moderate our demands. It is to reaffirm
the founding promise: that democracy is equality in action. It is the only
system that declares, despite our differences, that every citizen stands on
level ground before the law and has an equal say in shaping our collective
destiny.
This is not just a political fight. It is a moral one.
William James Spriggs