In How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt identify two governing norms that safeguard democracy, which they revisited last fall:
Two basic norms are essential to democracy. One is mutual toleration, or the norm of accepting the legitimacy of one’s partisan rivals. This means that no matter how much we may disagree with—and even dislike—our opponents, we recognize that they are loyal citizens who love the country just as we do and who have an equal and legitimate right to govern. In other words, we do not treat our rivals as enemies.
The second norm is institutional forbearance. Forbearance means refraining from exercising one’s legal right. It is an act of deliberate self-restraint—an underutilization of power that is legally available to us. Forbearance is essential to democracy. . . .
In a previous post I wrote that "Mitch McConnell has distinguished himself as a champion serial violator of forbearance." Both as minority leader and majority leader, the Kentucky senator's machinations set him apart from virtually all his predecessors -- at least in the past half century. (I'm in no position to render a judgment deeper into American history than that.) As a leader in the Senate, McConnell has been a master without peer at violating the spirit of parliamentary rules (for instance, the filibuster) and trampling on institutional norms (the Merrick Garland nomination) to achieve partisan advantage.
The death of Rush Limbaugh offers an occasion to remark on the political shock jock's record as a preeminent violator of the norm of mutual toleration. This exchange regarding Limbaugh's role as a cultural warrior, in an interview in The 19th, illustrates the point:
The 19th: Limbaugh coined the term “feminazi.” What does that mean? How did people respond to it? Is the term still used today?
To say that feminism is like Nazism is to say feminism is murderous, is ethnocentric violence. When you use phrases like that, it becomes harder to say, “All right, more women in this society are going to work. What are the right policies to support women? How should we think about that?” That’s a conversation we can sit down and have, but one does not sit down and rationally discuss things with a group that you’ve called Nazis. They have no right to be a part of the conversation.
I think those basic ideas that feminism is an attack on traditional masculinity, that feminism is an attempt to control how people live their lives, remain a powerful argument against feminism. I don’t think it’s too far to go to link that then to the sexism that we see in the sort of extreme MAGA right in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. I think [Limbaugh] was an incredibly powerful and important voice in spreading that idea. I think it has been taken up by lots of other people and in lots of other ways that have continued to make that idea, the “feminazi” idea — even if we don’t use that phrase — a force in politics.
The 19th: How did Limbaugh shape the public’s perception of women?
He provided a very prominent space for articulating views that, some would have argued, were supposed to have been antiquated or sort of pushed out of polite company. You don’t have to agree with Limbaugh, that, you know, a woman who wants access to birth control is a slut. But you can still think, “Why should the government subsidize immoral women who are having sex outside of prescribed heterosexual committed relationships?”
I think the way to think about his impact is those sorts of outrageous over-the-top statements don’t necessarily mean that all of his listeners agree, but they opened up a lot of space for less extreme but still very dangerous and harmful rhetoric.
Limbaugh, and of course Newt Gingrich, were pioneers in mainstreaming poisonous, hateful rhetoric into our national political discourse: demonizing the other side. It is impossible to understand how the Republican Party circa 1965 turned into the Trumpian GOP of 2021 without acknowledging the role of these two political actors.
After Limbaugh and Gingrich, political disagreements are as likely to result in tribal warfare, as in civil discussion. We are apt to confront deliberate dysfunction and gridlock, rather than reach agreements (which would require us to meet each other halfway) to resolve our differences and move forward.
It's a sad legacy.