Our Great Democracy Is Only As Good As We Make It
From the very outset, our version of government of the people, by the people, for the people was the model and tone-setter for democratic societies around the world.
“If there is a single country in the world where the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people can be properly appreciated . . . that country is undoubtedly America,” opined Alexis de Tocqueville in his seminal study of the American experiment in the 1830’s.
Today though many feel the system we cherish is faltering. As one of many indicators, the National Election Study done by the Pew Research Center finds that trust has eroded to the point that now less than one-fifth of Americans believe the federal government will do the right thing most of the time.
Mike in Concord: We’re staring monumentally important issues in the face, and doing absolutely nothing about them. I think that’s what happens when we don’t take democracy as seriously as we need to.
“Our Great Democracy Is Only As Good As We Make It” is the third of “10 principles to unite America” that look both to the past and to the future, reminding us of what we hold dear as Americans and at the same time challenging us to do better. They stand out as common purpose for our nation.
Based on four very different locales
Our nation goes easy on us. We’re not obliged to vote, nor to inform ourselves about the candidates. Our individual voices are drowned out by big-money special interests. Tiny towns are inconsequential in their legislative districts, invisible in their congressional districts. It’s easy to feel powerless.
We lap up unsubstantiated assertions from countless providers of unsubstantiated information. At least one foreign government is meddling in our elections, spreading further mis-information in the hope of creating chaos. Schools aren’t teaching civics anymore. Gerrymandering guarantees many congressional and legislative districts to one party or the other. Compromise has become a dirty word in many statehouses and the halls of Congress.
And yet . . . maybe we have no one to blame as much as ourselves for what we are getting. When citizens do make the effort, good things happen.
Tom in Edgefield, one of the participants in this project, upended a system that effectively denied blacks from being elected to local office by taking a lawsuit all the way to the Supreme Court. Hispanics in Ajo take satisfaction in how organizers roused the statewide Hispanic community from its historic lethargy to swing a race for the U.S. Senate.
Concord thinks of its annual Town Meeting as the purest form of democracy. Townspeople there work very hard to make it happen, but they own the results.
Diana in Concord: People take initiatives and find kindred spirits who are also willing to work on something even though it’s a long shot to get anything accomplished. There’s that kind of energy.
Truly, “Our Great Democracy Is Only As Good As We Make It.” We need to look at our own actions. When was the last time we did anything but vote?
A highly important word in this principle is TRUST. I feel that Americans are losing trust in a lot of things such as our legislators, our political leaders, our police force, the criminal justice and court system, health care, believing our scientists, education, the voting process, controlling climate change and much more. The challenge for the country’s future is how to regain that trust. I believe it has to start at the local level and build to the state and national level with competent representatives who will work together to make democracy work.