IT'S EQUALITY SINCE 1776

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