Militant democracy may at first glance seem at odds with America’s libertarian tradition, but the U.S. Constitution also possesses tools for combating antidemocratic extremism. As constitutional scholars remind us, Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted to explicitly prohibit “insurrectionists” from holding public office in the aftermath of the Civil War. Although it has rarely been used for this purpose, the Fourteenth Amendment offers a powerful tool to defend democracy from domestic enemies.
