"We Must Fight for a Better America. We Have No Choice."

[Nevilledog]

https://newrepublic.com/article/168881/must-fight-better-america-no-choice


No paywall
https://archive.ph/2jVSB


We can’t predict if the United States will survive as a democratic republic until 2050. It’s barely one in 2022. But we can imagine what it would take to make it one. In fact, for the survival of millions of Americans and billions around the world, we must ensure it does.

To do so, we should boldly articulate a vision for the United States that we have only occasionally aspired to convey: that of a fully democratic, cosmopolitan republic that finally rejects white supremacy as an organizing American ideology. It should be one that values and strengthens deliberation as the chief instrument of decision-making. And it should emphasize that we have a shared fate—not only as Americans but as humans on a threatened planet. Anything less risks disaster, both slow and fast.

The United States has undergone several “constitutional moments,” as Yale Law professor Bruce Ackerman has defined them. These are moments that start as a crisis and end in resolution. The resolutions result from the forging and harnessing of competing public visions of the good. These moments of crisis sparked deep deliberation among those who were allowed to speak and be heard—mostly wealthy white men, of course. The three main deliberative moments in Ackerman’s schema were the ratification of the Constitution, Reconstruction, and the New Deal. Each of these generated a brand-new covenant among the people and between the people and the state. The twenty-first century, starting with Bush v. Gore and culminating in the invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, has found us in another such constitutional moment.

We often misdiagnose our current malady as one of “polarization.” That’s wrong. We have one rogue, ethno-authoritarian party and one fairly stable and diverse party. It just looks like polarization when you map it red and blue or consider these parties to be equal in levels of mercenary commitment, which they overwhelmingly are not. In one sense, America has always been polarized, just not along partisan lines. It’s also been more polarized rather recently, as in 1919 or 1968.

*snip*

[crickets]

1. K&R for the clarifying comment on 'polarization' alone - well said.

As for the rest, I do have some nits (e.g. Americans lack a natural sense of nationhood?) with a couple of points, but it's an excellent essay on the whole. Hits many nails squarely on the head. More like this, please.