26-year-old American Quincy Claude Ayres stepped off the boat on December 5, 1917, onto the soil of war-torn France. Before him, hundreds of Americans had volunteered as ambulance drivers and doctors or joined the Canadian military to fight before the United States joined the war, such as American author William Faulkner. Why did these men, like Ayres, those early volunteers, travel from the only country that many of them had ever known to fight and die on foreign shores? The reasons are multiple, but many joined because of a higher belief in the cause they were fighting for.
Whether it was German atrocities in Belgium, unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic, or a general disgust with the imperial order of the Old World, these American boys fought because they believed in a cause higher than themselves. Wilson summarized these feelings in a speech before Congress on April 26, 1917: “The world must be made safe for democracy.” This claim and varying interpretations would define an American foreign policy that moved away from isolationism throughout the 20th century, with a brief interlude of reinforced isolationism in the interwar period. The United States recognized that democratic societies should and could not coexist with despotic regimes that threaten their institutions. The United States has since then propped up many a dictatorship. However, one product of those early days of Wilsonian optimism are The Fourteen Points. They were a recommendation for a new world order after World War I ended; they included provisions for self-determination of certain ethnic minorities, equal trade conditions, and a League of Nations wherein every nation could voice their grievances against other nations. All of these measures were supposed to create a world safe for democracy, one where free societies could hold open and free elections and determine their own paths.
The past decade has seen a stark withdrawal from those principles. The United States during President-elect Donald Trump’s presidency cozied up to dictators, and those same dictators found an ever freer hand to enact their totalitarian agendas within their countries and aggressive foreign policy on the world stage. Now, more than ever, the world must be made safe for democracy, but that duty does not fall solely on the shoulders of soldiers in foreign lands.
In the next four years, we may very well see our democratic institutions chipped away. With Republicans in control of the executive and legislative branches, and the judicial branch being dominated by conservative justices of our government, the stage is set for unprecedented changes in our political structures. Perhaps equally as dangerous as structural changes is Trump’s continual ignorance of political norms. Many of the things that we see as normal in American democracy, such as presidents putting their assets in a blind trust upon assuming office and leaving most of the personnel in administrative bodies the same between administrations, are not written in law, but rather the result of norms that previous presidents honored. The fact that these things are not codified in law will now likely come back to bite us as a nation, with Project 2025’s proposal to “Make federal bureaucrats more accountable to the democratically elected President and Congress” primarily being interpreted by commentators as a plan to staff the federal bureaucracy with Trump loyalists.
What can we as citizens do to make the world safe for democracy? The first thing we have to do is take care of ourselves and others. I am not the first person to say this nor will I be the last, but it bears repeating. Part of the process that I will outline below is about using the next four years to reach out within and beyond our communities to start conversations, and work in the next four years will mean looking out for others. Vitriol, exclusion, and elitism have no place in the next four years, and they will do nothing to help build bridges.
Secondly, I would recommend that if you have the mental bandwidth to do so, sit down and read Project 2025. It would be well worth your while, if you have not done so already, to familiarize yourself with what many see as the incoming administration’s playbook for the next four years. “Know thine enemy.” Do you need to read the entire 922-page “Mandate for Leadership”? Probably not, but understanding the broad strokes of Trump’s supporters’ plans for the country will be an important first step in preparing.
Thirdly, I would propose that those who oppose Trump and his project for the country — Democrats, Republicans, and third-party supporters — start reaching out to one another today and engage in the conversation for how to tackle the next four years and the election that will hopefully follow them. It can be easy to feel powerless right now, and that is a reasonable and understandable feeling, but democracy does not start and end at the ballot box. Your representatives and senators in Congress are still your representatives and whether they want to admit it or not, they have an obligation to represent you. As a Mainer, I will be doing more than hoping Senators Susan Collins and Angus King stand as voices in the Senate to preserve our democratic institutions; I will be writing to them and reminding them of that duty. You can do the same, because regardless of whether you voted for them or not, your senators and representatives have a duty to you, as their constituents, to hear you out and understand what you have to say about the issues in Congress. In 2022, protections for same-sex marriage were codified by the Respect for Marriage Act, which was a direct response to anxieties about the Supreme Court overturning an earlier decision that allowed it. All in all, twelve Senate Republicans voted for the bill; this shows us that party affiliation is not dispositive. Politicians can and do vote against what we expect. Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa voted against her own beliefs “in traditional marriage,” stating that “her stance evolved with growing popular support for same-sex marriage.” Politicians may not be the most responsive, but they do listen to their electorate, and they respond to popular support. If your representative or senator is a Republican, there is no reason why you should not reach out to them and make your opinions heard. Whatever you do in the next four years, remember that the world must be made safe for democracy.
While I fully support resisting Trump outside of the existing political structures, we must, at the same time, engage with the current political machines and work to make our voices heard. The world must be made safe for democracy, and participation in those democratic institutions outside of the campaign season is one way we can do that work.
