Missing Underlying Democratic Vision

3. Factors That Make Conflict Intractable

Once thought to be humanity's best defense against tyranny and oppression, as well as dysfunctional chaos and policy failure, democracy is falling short of these goals and is seen as backsliding in many places around the world. Fortunately, a great many people are gravely alarmed about these backslides, and are devoting considerable time and energy to a variety of efforts to "save democracy." Unfortunately, since there is no consensus on what democracy is, or how it should be saved, many of these efforts are working at cross purposes. Our failure to reconcile these competing views is a big part of the reason why democracy is in so much trouble.

In the United States, many on the left and the right believe that U.S. democracy is threatened (some would even say it is gone), but they disagree profoundly on the nature of the problem and who is at fault. The left faults President Trump, accusing him of acting as an authoritarian. It also faults Congress and the courts (particularly the Supreme Court) as failing to uphold their role as a check on administrative overreach. Many on the right believe that the Left far exceeded its authority when it was in power, imposing its will and values on all Americans, many of whom did not agree with Progressive values or policies. Both of these views tend to see democracy as an all-or-nothing, power-over, win-lose struggle which takes place primarily at the voting booth and, in 2020 in numerous court cases and public protests (particularly the one that took place on January 6, 2021) that attacked the U.S. Capitol Building trying to change the outcome of the election.

Others see "democracy" as far more than elections. In his BI interview, Harry Boyte reminded us of the early civil rights activists' view of democracy:

None of them thought democracy was mainly voting. They all used some version of the old formulation that it was a way of life, which was pretty much the idea of Alexis de Tocqueville when he traveled across America in the 1830s and then wrote Democracy in America, which was the title of his famous book. He said democracy was about people doing things, self-organizing. So I always thought about democracy as much bigger than simply elections.

And the role of the citizen is much more serious and substantial than simply as a voter or someone who obeys the law, the constitutional version of "citizen." That deepened over time and developed as we did things. I think you need public spaces or free spaces to keep citizenship alive.

This is becoming increasingly hard, though, as people learn less and less about how the American democratic system is supposed to work, and what their responsibilities are — and what opportunities they have to fulfill those responsibilities. Secondary schools used to act as civic skill builders—teaching students about the core tenets of democracy, and how our democratic government is supposed to function. Over the last few decades, far too many schools have eliminated their "civics" requirements because the curricula of such programs became highly contentious, and the simple, conflict-avoidant response was just to cut the civics courses. But this has resulted in a generation or two that understands very little about what democracy is, how it works, why it is preferable to other (particularly autocratic) systems, and, most importantly, why it is so important that citizens fulfill their civic responsibilities.

This lack of understanding, and lack of agreement among those who do think they understand what democracy is makes it very hard to defend or improve it. Rather, it just weakens it further.