One of the lessons that ought to be drawn from the riot at the Capitol is the grave danger of undermining the legitimacy of American elections with large segments of the public. That ought to give pause, in particular, to those on the political left who continually argue for unsettling the existing electoral and political system with the aim of producing outcomes they prefer.
What is legitimacy? As a matter of democratic political theory, legitimacy comes from the consent of the governed, such that governments are more or less legitimate depending upon how much they involve the people they govern in deciding who is to govern, and how. At a more fundamental, historical level, a legitimate government is one that is accepted by the people, irrespective of whether they have any say in it. A monarchy may not be legitimate in terms of the ideals of the Gettysburg Address, but if it’s been around for a while and if the people live with it as a part of the landscape without agitation, it has that basic level of legitimacy. It is possible for electoral republics and democracies to lose that, and that is often how they die.
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