When reading the sub-header of this article (“What students need to learn if American Democracy Is to Survive and Thrive”), I became very excited because I feel that this class reads a lot of negative and pessimistic things about American Democracy, both past and present. Based on this sub-header, I went into this article expecting more concrete and tangible advice; while some points hit this on the nose, I think others missed their mark. With the three civic virtues, I really liked how under awareness and moral humility/courage he recognized the fallibility of humanity, saying its ok to not get it right every time but as long as we are aware of the ideal and keep working towards it, mistakes and missteps along the way can be forgiven. I had some questions during the fairness section. Williamson called for having faith in the system to be fair and just, but often our system is neither of those things. In terms of elections, sometimes the popular vote winner does not match the electoral vote winner. Do we have an obligation to continue believing the system is fair? In 2000, there was a recount dispute that ended with Bush winning Florida by 537 votes, well within the margin of miscount error. Again, should we trust that elections are fair?
He goes on to address this in the moral humility/courage section, but I don’t think he answered the above questions well enough. In both those cases above, I believe that an injustice was committed, but many others do not. How can we differentiate bias from how we see things as just or unjust? How can we differentiate a person raising a grievance from a sore loser, and how do we determine which person is which?
The second half of his paper I enjoyed much more than the first. He touched on a lot of things we’ve previously discussed in class including Lincoln: the man vs. the myth. I really enjoyed the writings of Frederick Douglas because they echoed Williamson’s sentiments of before: we are all imperfect and being imperfect does not make you inherently bad. If someone can start their journey in a country where they are considered property and then continue on in their life to write about America and its democracy in a positive light, then it gives me hope that our democracy can survive this period of extreme polarization. It’s nice to see a more hopeful note for the future for a change.
I agree with everything in this post! I couldn’t really put my finger on why I enjoyed this article so much, but I think you’re right: It is a little hopeful. It starts off with the notion that there IS something we can do about the way we view politics and other significant parts of our country and society. And like you said, I very much appreciated the man vs the myth part about Lincoln. It only added to the idea that we should all be checking our biases, but not afraid of them, just be open-minded.
I agree that a lot of what we read is very pessimistic and it was somewhat refreshing to read something that was less gloomy about the future of the US democracy. I thought it was really interesting how it incorporated different things that we had read. I’m not sure if it really gave me hope for the future of our democracy though cause I don’t know if people are willing to do their ‘civic duty’