My students are afraid Trump will kill democracy. But facts remain stubborn things | Opinion

Over the last four decades, I've taught more than 8,000 students how to analyze and evaluate rhetoric in politics and other contexts. Since the election, a number of those students have reached out to me seeking reassurance about the future of our democracy. While the former students who have contacted me are desperately afraid of what could happen in a second Donald Trump administration, other former students might have been just as fearful about a Kamala Harris administration. To both groups, I would offer the same reassurance about the strength of our democratic system.

James Madison and the other founders designed a system of government that provided crucial safeguards to protect the nation from those who might threaten democratic norms in the pursuit of power. While they built important checks and balances into the Constitution, the most important protection is even more basic to our system. We talk first and then decide.

There is wide agreement that the most important essay ever written about American democracy is Madison's "Federalist No. 10." Madison was not an especially successful president, and, as a slaveholder, failed to confront the greatest moral evil of the time, but he also was our first great democratic theorist. Most of "Federalist No. 10" explained various forces that could threaten democratic governance. He wrote of the dangers posed by partisanship and an "over-bearing majority," of special interests, which he called factions, and observed somewhat dryly that "enlightened statesman will not always be at the helm."

But despite all these risks, Madison defended the new system of government based on the premise that competition between factions — which he called "a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government" — would protect the new nation.

Madison: Discussion beats anger Given all the threats to democratic governance, one might wonder why Madison had such faith in the new system of governance. He explained the source of his faith in "Federalist No. 41," when he wrote, "A bad cause seldom fails to reveal itself." Madison recognized human fallibility, the desire of special interests to protect and enrich themselves, the anger that might be expressed at different groups, and the desire of fallible humans for power and the risk that some might exercise that power to protect themselves and punish their enemies. But he still believed that the new nation would prosper and persevere because, over time, free and open discussion and debate would reveal a "bad cause."

Many of my former students dread what the next four years may bring. But at the same time, the arc of our history has always moved toward more inclusion and greater opportunity for all. It is important to remember that Americans once feared or hated immigrants from Ireland, Japan and elsewhere, Mennonites and many other religious minority groups, all of which are now fully included in the American family. President Barack Obama often quoted Martin Luther King Jr., who, in turn, was paraphrasing 19th century abolitionist Theodore Parker, saying that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." It doesn't bend that way constantly, but over time the movement has been in only one direction. That movement has occurred because we are all just people, and while public reason is often powerless in the moment, it has always driven events in the longer term.

Kamala Harris' debate win didn't matter Placing faith in public reason may seem naive after an election campaign in which reason seemed to matter very little. There is, after all, overwhelming consensus among commentators and scholars of political rhetoric that Vice President Harris clearly won the debate with Trump. My own close analysis of the debate indicates that she was a vastly superior debater compared to her opponent.

In the end, the debate mattered very little. But the long run is different than public response in a political campaign. In the long run, Adams is still right that "facts are stubborn things."

If Trump's policies produce dangerous effects, those facts will, over time, exhibit the stubbornness that Adams attributed to them. In his great speech at Westminster in 1982, President Ronald Reagan argued that the Soviet Union had lost the battle of ideas because people everywhere wanted to live in a society where they had a chance to build a better life for their families, where their rights were protected, and where they had a say in their own governance. History proved he was right.

If Trump's policies don't work or harm people, public reason will reveal those very stubborn facts. Public reason may work more slowly today than in the past because of the rise of social media and news silos — but being right is still a powerful thing, and being wrong even more powerful.

It may take years and there may be many setbacks, but public reason and a commitment to democratic values will win out. As then-Sen. Obama once said, "In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." The forces that power audacious hope are public reason and our shared humanity.

Robert C. Rowland is a professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas, focusing on presidential rhetoric. He was the primary speaker on President Ronald Reagan's rhetoric at the Reagan Centennial and is the author of "The Rhetoric of Donald Trump: Nationalist Populism and American Democracy."