“We always want to stand with democracy,” President Obama said on Monday, “even if the results don’t always mean that the leaders of those countries are favorable toward the United States.”

In theory, democracy guarantees freedom. It empowers commoners and frustrates dictators.

In reality, democracy is often a tool for despots. Though they may come to power by election and cloak themselves in democracy, they then use that power to squash opposition and amass more power. And often they never leave. Just look at Russia. And Turkmenistan. Witness Thailand and nations throughout Southeast Asia. Survey virtually every nation in Africa. In countries the world over, democracy is betraying its promises.

South America, to take another example, is rife with anti-democratic democracies. Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela, supposedly democracies, have all been rigged by autocrats. Colombia’s president is trying to strike term limits from the constitution in order to maintain his grip on power.

Honduras was treading the same dark path. Manuel Zelaya, a close ally of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro, was elected president—but he has since grown fond of classic big-man tactics. He disagrees with the Honduran constitution, which says his current term should be his last. He sought to shred it and try to repeal term limits through a popular referendum—following a greasy pattern established by Chávez (and copied by Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, and Bolivia’s Evo Morales). His thugs strong-armed and threatened citizens into supporting it. The whole process, besides being reprehensible, was against the law, which says the constitution can only be amended by Congress. The Honduran Supreme Court appropriately ordered the illegal referendum canceled. Zelaya, ignoring both the court and the constitution, continued to prepare for the sham vote. The military expressed its opposition to his lawlessness by refusing to distribute the ballots. Zelaya responded by firing the chief of the army.

These are not the actions of a democracy-lover. They’re straight from the despot’s playbook. The Hondurans know it, which is why Zelaya’s approval ratings are in the basement.

The Supreme Court felt justified in removing the budding dictator from office. It ordered the military to detain him. Soldiers captured Zelaya early Sunday morning and exiled him to Costa Rica. Later that day, Honduras’s Congress formally stripped him of office “for repeated violations to the constitution” and installed congressional leader Roberto Micheletti as interim president until November elections. It’s not your typical military “coup” when the military bows to the legislature, which installs the president’s constitutionally mandated successor, who vows to proceed with free and fair elections in five months as already scheduled.

Yes, Zelaya had managed to spook virtually the entire government—judiciary, military and legislature—with his slide toward tyranny. They united to reestablish the integrity of the constitution and the rule of law.

One retired general told cnn that Zelaya was such a stooge of Chávez’s that if they hadn’t ousted him, the Venezuelan dictator “would eventually be running Honduras by proxy.” No doubt that is why Chávez so strongly condemned the action. He branded it a coup d’état, said Zelaya was still president, called for urgent international intervention, threatened military action and put his troops on alert. And—he accused the U.S. of staging the coup.

Apparently intent on proving that statement wrong, President Obama quickly jumped onside with Chávez. His statement on the actions of Honduras’s Supreme Court and military was effectively the same as Venezuela’s: “We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras.” He lumped the action in with the “military coups” in South America’s past—juntas where military leaders have taken over governments to rule by military committee. Reminding reporters that Zelaya had been elected, Obama then made the comment about how the U.S. always wants to “stand with democracy.”

In two recent situations, standing “with democracy” has meant standing with despots.

In Iran, it meant supporting election results that overwhelmingly awarded Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second presidential term. It meant accepting as a legitimate expression of democracy a bogus election system that is clearly orchestrated to produce results acceptable to the country’s radical religious leaders. It meant all but ignoring those Iranians who protested in the streets in hope of a change in their nation’s tyrannical regime. There, legitimizing the mullahs and backing a radical and virulently anti-American president is a “stand with democracy.”

Now in Honduras, a “stand with democracy” means propping up South America’s false democracies—legitimizing Chávez, Castro, Correa, Morales and the lot. It means nullifying what are supposed to be the political checks on despotism—in this case a legislature and Supreme Court unanimously opposed to the president, with a military solidly behind them. It means trashing the rule of law.

Perhaps this U.S. administration’s sympathy with Zelaya’s disregard for questions of constitutionality should come as no surprise. In many ways it is taking a similar course here at home: amassing power while trampling law. Mr. Obama revealed his thinking on the “deficiencies” of America’s own Constitution years ago: He disagrees with its fundamental purpose to limit government. As Gerald Flurry wrote earlier this year, the president believes “the constraints on the Constitution need to be removed” because of how “the Founding Fathers erred in writing the defining legal charter of the United States!” (Read “The Radical Left and the American Constitution” from the January 2009 Trumpet print edition.) Time may well reveal the extent of overlap between the president’s thinking and that of some of South America’s more socialist leaders.

Regardless, on Honduras, Mr. Obama’s “stand with democracy” aligns with that of Chávez. And Daniel Ortega. And the Castro brothers. And the Organization of American States (“which, by admitting Cuba, is no longer an organization of democracies and now, through its radical membership, tries to dictate how other countries run themselves,” says Investor’s Business Daily). And the United Nations, which invited Zelaya to attend as it passed a resolution calling for his “immediate, safe and unconditional” return to power.

The president’s bid to break from the past and move America into the cosmopolitan wash of the international community is proceeding apace. He is consistently putting at ease those nations uncomfortable with the U.S. taking bold, unpopular stands. In crisis, he holds the international party line—regarding Honduras, Iran, Lebanon, Pakistan, North Korea. On questions of national interest, he sacrifices for the global community, no matter the cost—regarding financial regulation and oversight, global warming.

He is representing the U.S. as he sees it: a team player, merely one among the many, unexceptional, comfortable in the middle of the pack.

Biblical prophecy warns that this rapid diminution of America’s leadership comes with a dear price.