America must face its civic crisis

Ohis nation is in civic crisis. On the one hand, Americans report historically low levels of trust in government institutions and offices. On the other hand, they exaggerate the power of such institutions and offices, demanding that the US president end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, for example, or work harder to stop inflation. As the 2024 elections approach, some lament the farce of a democracy reduced to a choice between bad and worse; others see the prospect of defeat for the chosen candidates as they could the prospect of a foreign invasion or zombie apocalypse.

Americans are losing hope: specifically, that badge, civic They hope that their own choices and actions can meaningfully and positively shape the future of their communities. In the face of such hopelessness, we remember the words attributed to the late Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter: “In a democracy, the highest office is the office of citizen.”

The results of the 2024 elections are not irrelevant to such fears; they have rarely been more important. But whatever returns in November, the return of civic hope – and with it, the future of our democracy – depends on the return of the citizen: the conceptual and practical restoration of ordinary Americans to the center of self-government.

Why is such a restoration important and what would it look like?

The last 40 years of American politics illustrate the problem. Thanks to intellectuals and politicians of various stripes, the concept of democracy has shrunk in popular discourse to a form of consumption. Vote the right way – choose the right menu – and you can finally focus on you! As long as you do your part to grow the overall economy, we will all have the resources to live our lives as we want – to tend to our own backyards, so to speak. As for the government? It’s a big vending machine. Its main performance measure is customer satisfaction. Enter preference, receive result. Not satisfied? We appreciate your contribution! (But please do not shake, drop or burn the machine in the process.)

For decades, Americans have subscribed to this vision of consumer citizenship. Beginning in the 1980s, the time and energy Americans invested in neighborhood organizations, community meetings, civic institutions, and community recreation began to decline dramatically; In the figure of political scientist Robert Putnam, Alexis de Tocqueville’s nation of problem solvers and joiners had led to “playing bowling alone”.

Meanwhile, cultural commitments to rewarding hard work and cultivating concern for the common good have been transformed into an ethos of “meritocracy”, valuing individual achievement and distinction over collective problem solving and group success. Leading this trend was higher education, which renamed himself as a conduit for corporate jobs rather than an experience of civic and moral growth – a private good rather than a public good. Our colleges and universities now justify every academic or other student program as a step on the path to personal success.

Finally, the Americans vocational lives lost the relational and reciprocal values ​​that energized movements of cultural change such as the American Revolution and the fight for Civil Rights, for example, and shrunk, like democracy itself, in the mere provision of services What percentage of store owners, bartenders, librarians, salon workers, or members of Congress feel they have the ability or even the right to create public space for their neighbors to speak frankly, listen generously, and work patiently across deep differences in pursuit of shared goals?

See more information: How we can repair our democracy and build a more perfect union

In short, the promise of political consumerism turned out to be false. Subcontracting the collaborative and messy work of democracy to a small class of officials and officeholders encourages political laziness and selfishness, eroding citizens’ ability to understand or accept any outcomes except those they seek to pay for with their votes. There is no opportunity to build trust across differences. Everyone feels screwed or is afraid of getting screwed. And as politicians pander to the most demanding citizen-clients, these feelings and fears are reinforced by toxic political language, further eroding people’s ability to trust, respect, and resolve issues with one another.

Growing polarization fuels the rise of a political class with more incentives to destroy adversaries than to build common goods. Politics is no longer a space for civic inquiry, discussion and creativity, but a place where civic hope goes to die.

But he hasn’t died yet. In the spirit of the best political traditions in our history, ordinary Americans demonstrate how a little civic hope can spark a chain reaction of efforts to restore civic power—the kind of power that humanizes rather than corrupts, because it grows when shared.

One example is the growing backlash against polarization and the renewed commitment to civic action: the notion that only a citizenry equipped and accustomed to living, learning, and working across differences toward more equitable goals can prevent tyranny and govern. if significantly.

bravest angels, for example, emerged in the wake of the 2016 elections to combat the toxic polarization that was destroying families and communities and that has since encouraged political intimidation and violence. Clearly, the need was real and the approach compelling: through BA, tens of thousands of Americans participated in workshops that teach them to maintain their principles while loving their neighbors with different principles and seeking common ground for collaborative work to improve their communities.

Of course, cynics will read “workshop” as “talk-shop” and remind us that talk is cheap. Well, what about the ways we make a living? In the midst of an ultra-polarizing 2018 election cycle, the Harvard Business Review find something 9 in 10 Americans surveyed they were willing to earn less money to work towards a “collective and shared purpose” that transcended individual gain. That same year, research reported in the Stanford Social Innovation Review discovered that the millennial generation especially anxious build the civic capacity of communities through their work. Half a decade later, experts see these values ​​continuing to shape employment trends: In fact, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that in the decade between 2022 and 2032, job growth in “community and social service occupations ” will overcome growth in all but three of the other 21 major occupational groups it tracks.

It is true that certain classically “civic” professions, such as teaching, struggle to attract the numbers our communities need. But there is more to the story. Across the country, at a time when schools are often seen as centers of curriculum polarization, communities and their school districts are revising curricula to give students a complex but practical solution. Civic educationfit for the work of critically constructive patriotism: work rooted in care for fellow citizens and commitment to a better shared future, rather than hatred of enemies or reverence for a mythological past.

Nor should we believe the propaganda that all our colleges have become sinkholes of political groupthink. With encouragement and assistance from organizations such as Lumina Foundation It is Teagle Foundation, a growing number of higher education institutions are taking on the duty of helping students tap into the best moral and intellectual resources of our nation’s past in order to meet the greatest social and political challenges of the present. In the best of these initiatives, students learn the civically liberating and also humbling lesson that there has never been a single narrative of the American past, present, or future, nor a consensus about the roles that diverse actors can, should, or should play in American history. Furthermore, they learn that for many of those involved in our most celebrated movements of cultural change – from Independence to the fight for black freedom – “citizenship” was not a fixed or exclusive status, but a dynamic status. aspiration propelling millions to the work of building a more perfect union. In short, they learn that the work of defining and realizing democracy is theirs.

But not just yours. Like any complex society, we need a government that empowers certain citizens to act on our behalf. Recently, influential voices inside and outside of government have demanded that we stop treating citizen It is official as mutually exclusive roles. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns in 2020, for example, more than 100 contributors from government and independent sectors published the Thriving Together Springboard, a recovery plan from COVID and future challenges. The effort has resonated with thousands of civic and health innovators across the country, as well as countless federal government agencies. By the end of 2022, nearly 50 federal agencies had drafted a historic plan to Long-term equitable recovery and resilience (ELTR).

Both the Trampoline and ELTRR promote a pluralistic vision of “all people and places thriving together”; Both view the ability to expand “belonging” and build “civic muscle” as a vital condition for community health and well-being and a source of resilience when people face adversity and division. Finally, both emphasize that the knowledge, wisdom, creativity and effort of community members are not only morally but practically necessary ingredients in any effective policy.

While the Trampoline and the ELTRR demonstrate that the “return of the citizen” does not necessarily mean the rejection of the government. Democracy needs a government that responds to its citizens and the citizens involved in government. But the government and self-government are not synonymous. We need to study, support, elevate and disseminate all the way citizens are facing with hope and skill the daily challenges of living in our democracy and making the most of their opportunities.

Some will argue that Frankfurter’s position as citizen was never filled or effective. If so, all the more reason for its rightful occupants to claim it. It is the nature of democracy to always be in process. “Democracy”, as William James he wrote in 1897, reflecting on the US Civil War amid the upheavals of the Gilded Age, “is still on trial. The civic genius of the people is their only bulwark.” Or like Walt Whitman put it a generation earlier, “We often print the word Democracy. However, I cannot repeat too often that it is a word whose true essence still sleeps, completely unconscious. It is a great word, the history of which remains unwritten.”

It is we, the people, who must write it.