I am a transplant to Central Virginia and grew up as a nomadic Army brat, living on both coasts and middle America and spending time in Germany and Denmark. These experiences taught me lifelong positive values, such as respecting the many walks of life and worldviews of people different from me. Twenty-nine years in the Foreign Service reinforced those values as I travelled the globe. Living in countries from Central America to the Middle East, I was treated with dignity and always with a generous dose of hospitality. Breaking bread and sharing a meal seemed universal across every culture and people I encountered. These meals were a way of sharing common values while also proudly expressing their country’s or cultures unique foodways, moreover, they let you peer deeper shared values, and unflatten the world from the many simplistic stereotypes imposed on ‘shit hole’ countries.
I lived and or worked in countries that were failing, failed, or in the liminal space between these stages, stages constructed by the west and its desire to classify and label everything. Thank you, Linnaeus. I also worked and lived in many liberal democracies, some of which had risen out of dictatorships, while some of which were backsliding or had lapsed back to a more narrowly defined democracy, or even regressed back into authoritarian rule, with democratic window dressing. It is these experiences that trouble me about my own country because I sense we are backsliding, regressing from liberal democracy to who knows what.
That “l” in liberal is a small “l.” Liberal democracy is a pluralistic representative democracy, that has constitutionally established separation of powers, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, protects freedom of expression, and treats all citizens equally, and protects peoples civil and human rights. These tenets of liberal democracy are enshrined in two seminal documents. The first is the Declaration of Independence, a statement of aspirations. The second is our great nation’s written Constitution and its amendments, the rule of law.
I argue that the design of our government is fundamentally sound. The blueprint still calls for separation of powers: a Congress which has a House of representatives and a Senate; we also still have the office of the President. The fundamental concept of the one, the few, the many still holds. We still a Supreme Court, lower courts, and state courts. None of that has changed.
The structure is solid and sound, especially with the addition of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, sometimes called the second founding. These amendments redressed America’s foundational sin of permitting and perpetuating racialized slavery, and it seems these are the ones that are under the most attack. So what gives now?
Our history is complicated with many paradoxes. Freedom and slavery, civil war and reconstruction, industrialization and ethnic cleansing, land of opportunity and lynchings, Jim Crow and democracy’s arsenal. Fundamentally, we are a nation of periodic ruptures and rebuilding better. Today, we are in the throes of a deep rupture not seen since before the Civil War. A fatalism prevails in half the country, a desire for vengeance prevails in the other half it seems. We are amid an identity crisis: Whose America is this?
We are backsliding from our founding ideals of a liberal democracy, however imperfectly and selectively applied. Where this erosion of democracy will lead us is unknown. We need the folks in the middle ground to step up and recapture the conversation from the fringe 10 percent on either side of the political spectrum. I will offer that one should not count on America’s supposed “exceptionalism” to ride over the horizon to the rescue. Democracy is not a given. We are not the chosen ones. Rebuilding may be impossible this time around, but we can at least go to couples therapy and start storing up the rebuilding materials before tariffs make them unaffordable.
There are no easy explanations, there are no easy answers, there must be discourse, however. This blog is about that rupture.
Signed, An American.
