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James Bovard 12:13 p.m. ET April 4, 2017

Woodrow Wilson, third from right, in 1913.(Photo: AP via Library of Congress)

This week is the 100th anniversary of President Woodrow Wilsons speech to Congress seeking a declaration of war against Germany. Many people celebrate this centenary of Americas emergence as a world power. But, when the Trump administration is bombing or rattling sabers at half a dozen nations while many Democrats clamor to fight Russia, it is worth reviewing World War Ones high hopes and dire results.

Wilson was narrowly re-elected in 1916 based on a campaign slogan, "He kept us out of war." But Wilson had massively violated neutrality by providing armaments and moneyto the Allied powers that had been fighting Germany since 1914. In his war speech to Congress, Wilson hailed the U.S. government as "one of the champions of the rights of mankind" and proclaimed that "the world must be made safe for democracy."

American soldiers fought bravely and helped turn the tide on the Western Front in late 1918. But the cost was far higher than Americans anticipated. More than a hundred thousand American soldiers died in the third bloodiest war in U.S. history. Anotherhalf million Americans perishedfrom the Spanish flu epidemic spurred and spread by the war.

In his speech to Congress, Wilson declared, "We have no quarrel with the German people" and feel "sympathy and friendship" towards them. But his administration speedily commenced demonizing the "Huns." One Army recruiting poster portrayed German troops as an ape ravaging a half-naked damsel beneath an appeal to "Destroy this mad brute."

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Wilson acted as if the congressional declaration of war against Germany was also a declaration of war against the Constitution. Harvard professor Irving Babbitt commented in 1924: "Wilson, in the pursuit of his scheme for world service, was led to make light of the constitutional checks on his authority and to reach out almost automatically for unlimited power." Wilson even urged Congress to set up detention camps to quarantine "alien enemies."

Wilson unleashed ruthless censorship of any criticism. Anyone who spoke publicly against military conscriptionwas likely to get slammed with federal espionage or sedition charges. Possessing a pamphlet entitled Long Live the Constitution of the United Statesearned six months in jail for a Pennsylvania malcontent. Censorship was buttressed by fanatic propaganda campaigns led by the Committee on Public Information, a federal agency whose shameless motto was "faith in democracy... faith in fact."

The war enabled the American equivalent of the Taliban to triumph on the home front. Prohibition advocates "indignantly insisted that... any kind of opposition to prohibition was sinister and subversively pro-German," noted William Ross, author of World War 1 and the American Constitution. Even before the 18th Amendment (which banned alcohol consumption) was ratified, Wilson banned beer sales as a wartime measure. Prohibition was a public health disaster; therate of alcoholism tripled during the 1920s. To punish lawbreakers, the federal government added poisons to industrial alcohol that was often converted into drinkable hooch; ten thousand people were killedas a result. Professor Deborah Blum, the author of The Poisoner's Handbook, noted that "an official sense of higher purpose kept the poisoning program in place."

The war provided the pretext for unprecedented federal domination of the economy. Washington promised that "food will win the war"and farmers vastly increased their plantings. Price supports and government credits for foreign buyers sent crop prices and land prices skyrocketing. However, when the credits ended in 1920,prices and land values plunged, spurring massive bankruptcies across rural America. This spurred perennial political discontent that helped lead to a federal takeover of agricultureby the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s.

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World War One was ended by the Treaty of Versailles, which redrew European borders willy-nilly and imposed ruinous reparations on Germany. One of Wilsons top aides at the peace talks, Henry White, lamented: "We had such high hopes of this adventure; we believed God called us and now we are doing hells dirtiest work." Wilson had proclaimed 14 pointsto guide peace talks; instead, there were 14 separate small wars in Europetowards the end of his term after peace had been proclaimed. Millions of Irish Americans were outraged that, despite Wilsons bleatings about democracy, Britain brutally repressed Ireland during and after the war. The League of Nations, which Wilson championed in vain, was so smarmily worded that it could have obliged the U.S. to send troops to help Britaincrush the burgeoning Irish independence movement.

The chaos and economic depression sowed by the war and the Treaty of Versailles helped open the door to some of the worst dictators in modern times, including Germanys Adolf Hitler, Italys Benito Mussolini, and Vladimir Lenin whom Wilson intensely disliked because "he felt the Bolshevik leader had stolen his ideas for world peace," as historian Thomas Fleming noted in his 2003 masterpiece, The Illusion of Victory: America in World War 1.

Despite winning the war, Wilsons Democratic Party was crushed at the polls in both 1918 and 1920. H.L. Mencken wrote on the eve of the 1920 election that Americans were sickened of Wilsonian "idealism that is oblique, confusing, dishonest, and ferocious."

Have todays policymakers learned anything from the debacle a century ago? Wilson continues to be invoked by politicians who believe America can achieve great things by warring abroad. The bellicosity of both Republican and Democratic leaders is a reminder that Wilson also failed to make democracy safe for the world.

James Bovard,author ofPublic Policy Hooligan,isa member of USA TODAYsBoard of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter@JimBovard

You can read diverse opinions from ourBoard of Contributorsand other writers on theOpinion front page, on Twitter@USATOpinionand in our dailyOpinion newsletter. To submit a letter, comment or column, check oursubmission guidelines.

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Woodrow Wilson made democracy unsafe for the world: James Bovard - USA TODAY

March 31, 2017 Mexico CityFor years, Venezuela has flirted with authoritarianism. This week, it bid goodbye to any pretense that it remained a democratic country.

The nations Supreme Court announced Wednesday it would take over legislative powers and essentially dissolve the National Assembly, the only government pillar controlled by the political opposition. President Nicols Maduro is now the National Assembly, the bodys president, Julio Borges, told the Associated Press after the decision was announced. Its one thing to try and build a dictatorship and another to complete the circuit.

But the crumbling of Venezuelas democracy isnt a challenge confined to those living there. Problems caused by drug-trafficking and Venezuelas increasingly dysfunctional economy are beginning to spill over into neighboring countries. And despite the regions sensitivity to foreign meddling, given its rich history of US-backed coups, those countries are beginning to speak up.

The head of the 34-nation Organization of American States labeled the move a self-inflicted coup, and the final blow to democracy in Venezuela, and Peru withdrew its ambassador in protest.

The question is: Are regional attempts to broker some kind of political solution too little too late?

Last week, a dozen Latin American nations along with the United States and Canada made a rare joint statement calling on President Maduro to recognize the National Assemblys power. The meeting was called in response to a report issued earlier this month by OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro, which characterized Venezuela as lacking rule of law.

The diplomatic efforts undertaken have resulted in no progress, Mr. Almagro wrote. Repeated attempts at dialogue have failed and the citizens of Venezuela further lose faith in their government and the democratic process.

The OAS threatened to suspend Venezuela from the regions main collective body, but the effort was thwarted by a number of small countries that long benefited from subsidized oil shipments under former President Hugo Chvez.

Neighbors largely kept to the sidelines as the late Mr. Chvez, and more recently Maduro, dismantled presidential checks and balances piece by piece, or clamped down on freedom of expression and human rights.

There was always a hint of optimism around what often appeared to be undemocratic moves by Venezuelan authorities, tilting the playing field to benefit those in power, says Christopher Sabatini, a Latin American specialist at Columbia Universitys School of International and Public Affairs in New York. Many regional neighbors had faith that things would fall into place: the political opposition would unify and gain a foothold in the government and things would turn around, or the administration would be forced to reevaluate its position in the context of plummeting oil revenues or a starving electoral base.

For years the [political] opposition has been knocking on the doors of regional governments, talking about oppression and asking for assistance, says Carlos Romero, a political scientist at the Central University of Venezuela. But regional governments, even the United States, said This is a legitimate government, it was voted into power. That was the excuse for not implementing sanctions or calling for change.

There are other reasons for the reticence to criticize Venezuela, says Mr. Sabatini. Its very difficult for this region to call out democratic abuses by a leftist government.

Many Latin American nations suffered years, or even decades, of military dictatorships during the 20thcentury. As a result, the political left is seen as the moral authority over strong commitments to social justice and protecting human, cultural, social, and economic rights.

You can talk to human rights activists in [Latin America] and ask, Why dont you say anything about Cuba? Sabatini says, offering another example. And they say, Its a mess, but we cant. Castro is such an icon.

Venezuelas foreign ministry played on this history in defending the courts decision this week, accusing critics of forming a right-wing regional pact to topple Maduro.

And thats the other side of the coin, says Sabatini. While many in the region have long feared calling out Venezuela due to Chvezs commitment to the poor and social programming, others have sometimes been too quick to call foul, undermining legitimate concerns.

The Supreme Courts decision this week may change that dynamic. The court first limited lawmakers immunity and then assumed control of the National Assembly because it deemed the body in contempt of past court rulings. The decision dismantles the legislature, which was democratically elected in 2015 with a majority of opposition lawmakers.

Venezuelans took to the streets in protest early Friday in small numbers, and imprisoned opposition leader Leopoldo Lpez called on citizens via Twitter to reject dictatorship and rescue democracy.

Venezuela has long imprisoned opposition activists, shut down local media, and barred international news outlets from reporting in the country. A lower court suspended a recall referendum, allowed under the constitution, which could have led to an emergency presidential election, citing irregularities in how signatures were gathered.

And as citizens face historic shortages of food and medical supplies, and hunger and malnutrition sweep the country, the government continues to deny Venezuela is dealing with a humanitarian emergency.

Mr. Romero in Caracas says there are growing concerns over mass migration, drug trafficking, and other illegal activities spilling out from Venezuela, not only into Colombia, which has long been the case, but into Brazil, Guyana, and nearby islands like Curaao.

For these countries its becoming a theme of security, Romero says.

Over the years, regional bodies, including UNASUR, a collection of South American nations, have tried to ignite discourse, but those efforts fizzled out.

Neighboring countries, friendly countries, can only do so much, says Celso Amorim, a former Brazilian foreign minister under Presidents Itamar Francoand Luiz Incio Lula da Silva. We cant really interfere directly in the politics of Venezuela.

He believes dialogue has long been the only path forward for Venezuela, but recent moves to condemn the administration are pushing it more toward isolation and making regional diplomacy more challenging. And other problems in Latin America from economic slowdowns to a presidential impeachment in Brazil and the end of a decades-long civil war in Colombia are pressuring governments to keep their eyes on internal problems.

Of course we cannot bump a country into democracy through dialogue, says Mr. Amorim, who recently published a book, Acting Globally: Memoirs of Brazil's Assertive Foreign Policy. But dialogue can avoid the worst. Parties can come to some kind of agreement.

Some worry the calls for talks with Venezuela are coming too late. Theres no longer a clear institutional exit, says Sabatini. Theres not an election, the government has shut down the option of a referendum. Do you form a coalition government? Would that include some elements who have very unsavory ties to the current administration, he asks.

And then theres the question of who else in the region might be watching Venezuela and taking notes, Sabatini says. Nicaragua has taken steps in recent years to weaken its democracy, with President Daniel Ortega running for and winning his third consecutive five-year term last fall with his wife as his running partner. Ecuador is facing a heated runoff election this weekend that is the first time in a decade that President Rafael Correa isnt on the ballot. His former vice president is on the ticket, but how a potential loss in Correas camp is received could determine Ecuadors democratic health.

Venezuelan authorities can keep living in their movie, controlling the public, reducing democracy, clamping down on the press, says Romero. But weve seen this story before and it doesnt end well.

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Venezuela knocks over its democracy. The region pushes back. (+video) - Christian Science Monitor

CARACAS Venezuela's opposition lawmakers said on Sunday they will push for the removal of Supreme Court judges whom they accuse of acting on behalf of the ruling Socialists after the top tribunal briefly assumed control of congress last week.

While the move by the opposition-led congress would only be symbolic because it remains powerless, it could add to pressure on unpopular president Nicolas Maduro as he tries to defuse the furor over what critics saw as a lurch into dictatorship.

The Supreme Court's ruling last week that it would take over functions of the National Assembly triggered international condemnation and opposition protests at home.

Even the country's attorney general, a longtime government ally, said the decision was unconstitutional in a rare public rebuke from Maduro's ranks. On Saturday, at the request of the government, the Supreme Court eliminated the offending ruling.

But Maduro opponents said no one should believe that row- back meant democracy had been restored in the nation of 30 million people with the world's largest oil reserves.

"Despite a supposed retraction by the government after creating a coup d'etat, and apart from the clarification by the Supreme Court, the coup persists," lawmaker Juan Matheus said on behalf of the opposition.

"The rupture of the constitutional order continues," he added at a news conference inside the legislative building, flanked by pro-opposition legal and constitutional experts.

Matheus said they will begin proceedings to remove the judges on Tuesday but he did not give further details.

Since the opposition won a majority in congress in late 2015, the court has issued a raft of rulings backing Maduro and overturning most of the assembly's measures, meaning legislators remain effectively powerless.

Maduro, who narrowly won election to replace his late mentor Hugo Chavez in 2013, said any constitutional controversy is over after he convened a special security committee over the weekend that instructed the Supreme Court to rectify the ruling.

"Every country has its problems and resolves them peacefully, constitutionally," he said on his weekly television show, "Sundays With Maduro," adding that the government's resolution of the crisis had been "impeccable."

He has sought to portray himself as a statesman above a conflict between institutions, but critics said he and the ruling Socialist Party were pulling the strings on judicial bodies stuffed with stalwarts.

Stung by the international outcry, including an unprecedented wave of statements from around Latin America, Maduro alleged he is the victim of a U.S.-led smear campaign intended to lay the groundwork for a coup against him.

"Venezuela demands respect from the entire world in order to continue living in peace. Nobody need get involved in Venezuelan issues," Maduro added.

OAS DEBATES VENEZUELA

Maduro's far more popular predecessor Chavez, who ruled Venezuela from 1999-2013 before dying of cancer, was briefly toppled in a 2002 coup but came back 36 hours later when supporters poured onto the streets and military factions came to his aid.

Critics said it is not only the sidelining of an elected body, but also the jailing of scores of opponents, postponement of local elections last year and thwarting of a referendum on Maduro that evidence Venezuela's democratic erosion.

Socialist Party officials, who were proud of the legitimacy bestowed by constant election wins under Chavez, have detailed their justifications for all those actions, saying opponents have broken the law and used fraud in the 2016 referendum drive.

While attention often focuses on the headline-grabbing polemics between opposition and government, analysts believe any potential near-term change may come instead from ruptures within the administration or a nudge from the powerful military.

Foreign pressure is mounting too.

Under Chavez, Venezuela led a resurgent leftist bloc in Latin America, but shifts to the right in Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Paraguay have changed that dynamic.

The Organization of American States (OAS), whose head Luis Almagro is a hate figure for Maduro's government and wants it suspended from the bloc, was due to meet on Monday to debate Venezuela.

The week's events have seen instability re-emerge on the streets of Venezuela, with pockets of protesters clashing with security forces who have fired teargas several times.

There appears to be little appetite within the opposition for renewed mass rallies which have failed time and time again during the nearly two-decade rule of the socialists.

The opposition's main demand is for the next presidential election, slated for December 2018, to be brought forward.

Maduro, a former bus driver, foreign minister and self-declared "son" of Chavez, was elected with around 50 percent approval ratings, but has seen those plummet during an economic crisis.

Basic foods and medicines are often scarce, inflation is the highest in the world and there are long lines at many shops.

Critics blame a failing socialist system, while the government says its enemies are waging an economic war. The fall in oil prices since mid-2014 has exacerbated the crisis.

(Additional reporting by Diego Ore and Deisy Buitrago; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne and Girish Gupta; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

BORDEAUX/CHATEAUROUX French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen told a political rally on Sunday that the euro currency which she wants France to ditch was like a knife in the ribs of the French people.

CARPI, Italy Perhaps the last thing Pope Francis expected to find during a visit to the northern Italian city of Carpi on Sunday was a huge 136-year-old plaque honoring the victims of "papal tyranny".

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Venezuela opposition turns ire on Supreme Court judges - Reuters

As a country of 1.3 billion people, more than 800 million of whom are eligible to vote, India takes pride in being the worlds largest democracy. India has often lauded its ability to transfer power peacefully every five years since the first general election of 1951 (except for Indira Gandhis experiment with autocracy in 1975). Most recently, even news of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections is keen to point out that state elections in India are larger than the national elections of several European countries. However, while such self-aggrandizing statistics highlight the monumental task of the Election Commission of India, they do nothing to validate Indias success as a democracy. Rather, a superficial satisfaction with the size of Indias elections risks perpetuating ignorance of the underlying issues that plague Indias democracy.

The health of a democracy cannot be measured by the size of its voter base nor simply by the peaceful transition of power. Such standards of evaluation may be sufficient for nascent democracies struggling to implement the practice of universal adult suffrage (such as countries in the Middle East and North Africa that are experimenting with democracy in the wake of the Arab Spring), but not for India, which has a more mature democracy. India aspires to become a secular, liberal, global superpower and considers itself a counterweight to undemocratic regimes in its backyard. As such, voter participation is a necessarybut insufficientmeasurement of how far the country has come since its independence and how much further it has to go to truly uphold the ideals of democracy. If much of Indias soft power (as well as its moral superiority) against China, Pakistan and other competing states arises from successful democratic tradition, then India must ensure a more complete understanding of the challenges its democracy is currently facing.

Even if Indias democracy was measured by the size and success of its elections, its efficacy is called into question by news of candidates bribing voters, using threat of force to sway voting behavior and otherwise finding ways to ignore or circumvent the principles safeguarded by the Election Commission. Even when elections are not overtly manipulated, electioneering that focuses on identity and caste politics promotes the selection of suboptimal candidates, without respect to their merit or the substance of their policies. This adulteration of the election process has a ripple effect leading to perverse outcomes through the rest of the democratic institutional machinery.

As Indias democracy continues to mature, an increasingly important indicator of its health will be the health of its constituent political institutions. The key political institutions responsible for executing the functions of democracy and protecting its founding principles of liberty, equality and justice constitute the legislative, judicial and executive branches of government. Not only is each branch of government important in its own right, but it is even more important that all three branches work in concert to check and balance each others powers. Institutions such as the Parliament of India, which function upon the principle of majority rule, are counterbalanced by institutions such as the judiciary, which are responsible for protecting the rights of the minorities against the potential abuses of the majority. Institutions of the executive branch fall within the ambit of both aims, as they are responsible for executing the dictates of Parliament, while also enforcing laws that protect minorities. If the health of Indias democracy were gauged by the efficacy of its political institutions, then it would likely be judged to be in a fragile, and perhaps dismal, state.

For example, the most visible of all democratic institutions, the Parliament, has largely lost the faith of the electorate. The election of Members of Parliament who are underqualified has eroded the Parliaments ability to pass laws and be responsive to the needs of the nation. More than one-third of the current Members of Parliament have criminal charges pending against them. Though they are permitted to serve under Indian law (but face the risk of dismissal if they are convicted), such ignominious qualifications do not befit a role of national leadership. Furthermore, the inability of elected representatives and Parliament to think holistically (rather than for the narrow benefits of their caste and constituents) has led to a fractionalization of the political assembly that has rendered ineffectual and mired in gridlock. Representatives are either looking to fill their own purses, to satisfy the whims of their narrow vote banks, or to oppose the initiatives of the majority for the sake of opposition itself. As a result, Parliament often fails to pass meaningful reforms regardless of which political party is in power. Even the conduct of Parliamentarians, who are keen to employ feuds, foul language and hysteria on the floor of the chamber, has become an entertaining soap opera, but has eroded the publics trust in this keystone institution. The nature of Parliament as a forum for thoughtful debate of issues facing the nation is clearly at risk, reflecting the endemic failure of the election processes, despite Indias claim to the title of worlds largest democracy.

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Is India Still the World's Largest Democracy? - The National Interest Online

Liberal, secular democracies are besieged. Their ideals are being challenged among Hindus in India, among Republicans in America and among political parties in France. They are besieged in Russia, Turkey and other countries. Alarms were heard around the world with the unexpected election of Donald Trump as president of the USthough there were many earlier warnings of dissatisfaction with institutions of liberal democracy, with the rise of authoritarian leaders and populist movements on all continents. Like global warming, which has come into collective human awareness lately, the causes of discontent with liberal democracy have been brewing outside the gatherings in which people like us from around the world were celebrating globalizations benefits. They werent listening.

A democracy or an econocracy?

An expanding movement called Rethinking economics, of over 40 groups of economics students in 13 countries, is expressing dissatisfaction with the ideas of economics they are being taught. They also point to a root cause of the global discontent with democracies. In their view, the large influence of economists on governments and in multilateral organizations, as well as the dominant ideas of economics that are being translated into public policy, have converted democracies into econocracies. They present their arguments in a very readable book, The Econocracy: The Perils Of Leaving Economics To The Experts.

The economy, they say, has become a parallel universe to human society. It has its own models of the world founded on over-simplified premises such as: Human beings are rational, self-interested agents; transactions between them can be modelled as mathematical formulas; and whatever cannot be quantified cannot have a role in their models. In this over-simplified view of human society, politicsthe cut and thrust of human aspirations and poweris an interference in the growth of a disembodied economy, the maximization of whose growth must be the ultimate goal of good economic policies.

The authors give the example of how a famous childrens charity justified a campaign to encourage fathers to read to their children on the basis that improving literacy would increase GDP (gross domestic product) by 1.5% by 2020. With the dominance of economists in public policy, people are being led to think that something is worth doing only if it will contribute to the growth of GDP.

Rather than society being manipulated to feed the growth of a disembodied economy, the economy must be changeable to serve society. In his introduction to The Econocracy, J.B.S. Haldane, chief economist at the Bank of England, writes, Public interest in institutions has been dented. Repairing that dent... will require new and wider means of listening to, and learning from societal stakeholders. The student authors say, We believe that at its core, economics should be a public discussion about how to organize society. To be able to do that, economics must be transformed from a technical discipline into a public dialogue.

EVMs and deliberative democracy

US Justice Louis Brandeis said: The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people. Public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be the fundamental principle of the American government. The popular vision of democracy is a society in which every citizen has a right to vote for her representative in government. In this vision, the core of democracy is free, fair and frequent elections. According to this concept, India is a hugely successful democracy. Using technology, such as electronic voting machines (EVMs), it conducts elections on a scale no other country does. EVMs are transported even to remote mountain hamlets so that every citizen can exercise her right to vote.

This vision sees only the vertical threads of democracys fabricthe constitutional relationship between the people and those who govern them. It misses the horizontal threads that make the fabric of democracy strong. The horizontal threads are processes for deliberation among citizens, who may have diverse opinions about the qualities of their society and differences about what public policy should be. As Brandeis said, public discussion is the duty of citizens; only to vote in elections is not enough.

Technology is making it easier for consumers to exercise their choices in the marketplace. With a touch on their smartphones, they can select from a dazzling array of products and services sellers offer them. They can also electronically select a candidate from those offered to them at elections. Social media and marketing companies are deploying increasingly better algorithms to understand every individuals preferences and give her what she wants. They know what we like and give us more of what we like. Thus, social media, with its vast reach, is creating large echo chambers of people with the same preferences, within which they can hear more about what they like, from people they want to follow. However, it is deepening divides between people with different views. They do not hear each other.

For a healthy democracy, shared public spaces, online or not, are a lot better than echo chambers, writes Cass Sunstein in his book, #Republic: Divided Democracy In The Age Of Social Media. Digital technologies and social media are making life easier for consumers. But they are making life more difficult for citizens. Two centuries before social media, framers of the US Constitution were deeply worried that without the horizontal weft of democratic deliberations, democracys fabric would be weak. Social media facilitates populism. It is making people passive consumers and passionate supporters of productsincluding political leaders.

Democracys vertical links between people and their governments have become weak, with experts making policies which they are convinced are good for the economy, without listening to the people. Democracys horizontal threads are fraying, with people like us listening only to people we like, a tendency that social media strengthens. Deficiencies in listening are root causes for the weakening of democracys fabric.

Arun Maira served in the erstwhile Planning Commission.

First Published: Sun, Apr 02 2017. 10 58 PM IST

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The fraying fabric of liberal democracy - Livemint