In the last post in this series, we discussed prudential and existential reasons that democracy is, in some form, the appropriate form of government for free, equal, dignified human beings. Now, let’s dig a little deeper.

Lincoln, in the Gettysburg Address, posed a concern: if America failed as a nation, government “of the people, by the people, for the people” would “perish from the earth.” What some have called the “American Experiment” is just that — it begins from an hypothesis, that “all the people” are actually able to govern themselves — and we might add here, in a way not previously seen in history. The Civil War, in Lincoln’s view, was a genuine threat to that ideal. And it was so because the war was wrapped around the question that had plagued the then-eighty-year-old nation since its conception: how could a nation “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” countenance slavery in any form?

The sad fact is that government by the people does not guarantee that it will be government for all of the people. It is, in short, no guarantee of democracy, if we take all three parts of Lincoln’s formula — of, by, for — to be necessary and sufficient for democracy. Majorities can be tyrannical — and American history has shown how the majority can be tyrannical and even totalitarian: slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, removal, the list goes on. Government by the people means that all government does is done in our names. Moreover, the maj can succumb to demagoguery and become, in essence, a mob. We know this all too well today, although, to be sure, Trump’s support has come from super-empowered minorities rather than genuine majorities.

The Founders were so concerned about mob rule that they implemented many checks on democracy, checks that not surprisingly protected their own class interests. They wanted to mediate and moderate the people’s voices. And they were not entirely unjustified in their concerns. An electorate ill-informed and ill-educated is an electorate ill-prepared to act for the people with its engagement or its votes, as the MAGA movement clearly demonstrates. 

Over time, our government has undergone a long process of democratization:

• the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution eliminated slavery and democratized citizenship.
• the 17th Amendment gave the people a direct voice in the election of Senators
• the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote, finally extending the franchise to half of the population that had been denied it.
• the 23rd Amendment gave the District of Columbia representation.
• the 24th Amendment eliminated poll taxes, which had greatly restricted the poor from voting.
• the 26th Amendment extended the right to vote to 18-year-olds — recognizing that if you could serve in the military at 18, you ought to have a say in the government’s decisions about engaging in war.

All of these amendments have either expanded who is included in “government by the people” or how much say we the people have in our own governance. I will not go into all of the other factors and agents, such as the Great Depression and FDR’s response, that extended this democratization.

So here we are, with this history of democratic expansion, now facing a concerted oligarch-driven effort to reverse that democratization. We should be moving toward even more expansive democracy: eliminating the power differentials created by the Senate and the Electoral College, by private funding of political campaigns, and more. 

So the question is: what does it take for government by the people to effect government  for the people?  How do we the people effectively pursue our founding ideals — that all are created equal and that we all therefore have rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

There are Constitutional and structural reforms that are needed, such as those hinted at above. We also need somehow to deal with a communications environment corrupted by polarization, misinformation, and disinformation. Thinkers from Thomas Jefferson to John Dewey to Amy Gutmann have philosophized about the need for an educated electorate for an effective democracy. I think that this issue is salient — and I don’t really know even how to work toward an answer.

Beyond the information problem, though, there is something more: we must recover a culture of democracy. We have learned, all too late, that policies, rules and regulations are not enough in themselves. Democracy requires a culture of good will. A culture that embodies our equality and our unalienable rights, as well as the responsibilities for each of us that those entail. It would be a culture imbued with virtues such as respect, openness, sympathy, concern, kindness, honesty, communicativeness, acceptance, engagement. In short, all of the virtues that are opposite to Trump’s culture of cruelty, dishonesty, corruption and closure.

Can we really embrace the ideals of the Declaration? Our 250-year history can give us hope — we have overcome many sins, including slavery — but our recent history gives us pause. That said, polling indicates that a majority of Americans really do seek to embody many of these democratic values. And the more that people see the impact of Trump’s anti-democratic policies on real people, the more they react with outrage.

The culture of democracy requires not just that we exercise our democratic authorship, but that we exercise it on behalf of democratic ideals. Government by the people is intimately linked to genuine government for the people — and, as we will discuss in the next post — government of the people.