The Demands of Democracy

Speaking on succeeding days at the Calvin University January Series 2021, Danielle Allen and Jeffrey Rosen called on people to pay closer attention to the intricacies and purposes of democracy and the U.S. Constitution.

Although Allen and Rosen focused on different aspects of U.S. laws and policies, each spoke about the compelling need for people to get more deeply involved in the process of how they are governed. Especially in light of the Jan. 6 breach  of the U.S. Capitol by rioters, the time has come for people to reason together and seek common goals, they said.

“We need to find a common purpose, given what we are seeing in our own culture as a decline in commitment to each other and our democracy,” said Allen, a political theorist who is director of Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics.

“We have ceased to trust each other,” she added. “We need to get back to the work of helping get people involved and save our democracy.”

Allen spoke on Wednesday, Jan. 13 at the January Series, which is taking place online this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization whose mission is to educate the public about the U.S. Constitution, spoke on Thursday, Jan. 14.

While Allen emphasized the shaky reality of U.S. democracy, Rosen talked about the need to better understand how checks and balances afforded by the U.S. Constitution can operate at times such as these.

“No matter where we fall on the political spectrum, this is an unparalleled time,” said Rosen, also a professor at the George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor to The Atlantic magazine. “As U.S. citizens, we have the duty to look at the complicated sides of all of the issues before making up our minds on what we think.”

Examining and better understanding the framework of democracy contained in the Constitution can “help us lift ourselves above politics,” said Rosen. “The Constitution is a great document of human freedom. It provides a stable, nonpartisan approach to carry us through.”

At the January Series, Danielle Allen said she is a cochair of the Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship, formed to explore how best to respond to weaknesses and vulnerabilities in political and civic life.

The commission’s final and bipartisan report, Our Common Purpose: Reinventing AmericanDemocracy for the 21st Century, was released in June 2020 and includes six strategies and 31 recommendations to help the nation emerge as a more resilient democracy by 2026, the nation’s 250th anniversary.

“These recommendations are meant to take a fresh look at our founding ideals and documents,” said Allen.

Among other things, the commission defined the challenges the U.S. democracy is facing: rising inequality; political polarization; a surge of white nationalism; a lack of trust in our nation's institutions; and a fragmented media environment.

The commission, Allen said, “advocates rebuilding organizations to knit communities together, especially by building out civic media” — that is, by expanding and transforming civic education.

Democracy flourishes only when communities flourish, and that happens only through education that helps people realize what living in a democracy entails, she said.

“In a democracy, it is the people who participate together to share the willingness to fix our democracy” when it needs fixing, said Allen.

“Democracy doesn’t fall down like manna from heaven,” she said. “You have to understand the value of free self-government” and be willing to participate in it on all levels, ranging from your own community on up to at least being aware of what is happening in Washington, D.C.

For the commission report, Allen and others traveled across the country to hold listening sessions, wanting to hear of the challenges facing people living in the U.S. She came away aware of deep divisions over any number of issues.

“We realized the need for hearing the worldviews of other people and to make sense of what they believe. But this is incredibly hard for us to do.

“We need to ask ‘How did our worldviews become so different? How can we get back to shared meaning?’”

Allen also believes that many people in the U.S. hunger for peace between communities, between political persuasions, and between families.

“We are facing a really tough time, and yet we can focus on hope and the good, and we can walk more closely toward that conviction together,” Allen said.

With our eyes on the Constitution, said Jeffrey Rosen in his presentation, we can find a roadmap that has led the nation through many difficulties, and we can keep following that in the future. And by studying the Constitution, we can more deeply realize what democracy is all about.

Playing a key role in this is how courts have interpreted and will interpret The Constitution, he explained. Courts may not always get it right, but the law is an evolving process that helps to govern many aspects of our communal lives, he added.

Just recently came the struggle over the presidential election. Over 60 lawsuits claiming election fraud were brought before courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. While a few claims remain in process, most have already been dismissed as baseless or dropped for lack of evidence, helping the nation to move forward to inaugurate the new president.

The framers of the Constitution realized that they were moving into difficult territory. They were asking people to set aside their emotions — their biases, prejudices, and self-interests — in order to see beyond themselves to higher purposes, said Rosen.

 “It is up to us ‘we the people’ to preserve and protect the Constitution,” he said.  “We need to have the ability to agree to disagree and the humility to see that the other side might be right.”

Democracy isn’t easy. Keeping it on track — to keep the guardrails in place — requires all of us to play a part, said Rosen.

“We need to engage in hard work, deep reading, hard thinking, and respectful deliberation” in order to be vibrant, participating members of the U.S. democracy, he added.

So far the principles defining the Constitution have survived. But that doesn’t mean our democracy will be here in the future, said Rosen, unless we use our minds, the faculty of reason, to make decisions about “what it means to live in a democracy in which there is life, liberty, justice for all.”

The online 2021 January Series is available live on weekdays from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. through Tues., Jan. 26. Each day’s talk is also available for viewing till midnight that same day.