The surprising resilience of American democracy

Americans are learning afresh that such propositions are inimical to democracy. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” the Founders declared: Without the truth as a cardinal value, self-government collapses. And while they had no illusions about human nature, neither did they think that the United States could survive without leaders who displayed the virtues so lacking in the current occupant of the White House. A George Washington or an Abraham Lincoln, a Theodore Roosevelt or a John F. Kennedy could approach greatness only because, despite their individual flaws, they had some noble qualities about them, some inspiring vision to raise the American people, some defining largeness of spirit. There is, by contrast, nothing admirable about Donald Trump. The stock market may flutter upwards for a bit, but no enduring good can come of him.

The way ahead will lie for some in political activism, for others simply in calling out the truth as they understand it. But moral crises require moral solutions, and those are not to be found in the voting booth or the public square, as essential as activity in those domains may be. Rather, it is in the daily affirmation of the principles so clearly expressed in the great documents and speeches of the American past, from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to the Gettysburg Address to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream,” that a way ahead lies. It is in civic education, and a celebration of all that really is great in the American past, that the answer to the bigotry and hucksterism of the 45th president, and the toadying and lies of his sycophants and courtiers is to be found.