Rob Reiner, the noted Hollywood actor and director, serves a very useful public purpose because he often says out loud what other progressives think but won’t dare utter.

Last weekend saw a classic Reinerism. He tweeted:

The responses were quite scathing, with a favorite being “Better make sure there’s no second party candidate either, just to be safe. For Democracy.”

Our friends at Issues & Insights say Reiner is far from alone in his desperate desire to smother opposing points of view, I.e. kill democracy in order to save it. They’ve compiled a list of the following headlines from just the last few weeks:

• • • “The GOP’s impeachment push is an attack on democracy”
    • “Elon Musk Is a Threat to Democracy”
    • “Trump’s Threat to Democracy Is Now Systemic”
    • “Threats to democracy: Climate misinformation and gendered disinformation”
    • “The Supreme Court’s ‘Major Questions Doctrine’ Is a Threat to Democracy”
    • “Housing Crisis a Threat to Democracy”
    • “Doug Jones: Third party presidential bids ‘threat to democracy”

The University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats conducted a poll asking Americans if “The use of force is justified to restore Donald Trump to the presidency.” The survey found that only 3.9 percent of Republicans “strongly agree” with that statement, with another 5.6 percent saying they “agree.”

Completely unremarked in coverage of the polls was that 16.1 percent of Democrats agreed with that statement, with almost one in 10 saying  they “strongly agree.” The difference between the 9.5 percent of Republicans who say force is justified to protect democracy is dwarfed by the 16.1% of Democrats who say force is justified to keep a former president from returning to office.

As Issues & Insights notes: “Now ask yourself, which side is a threat to democracy?” We would also add, and which side gets almost no scrutiny about the dangerous views of its most extreme members?