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Note to Editors: This is Column 2, for release the week of September 20, 1999.Note: This is the second of an eight-part series on American
Democracy written by JSU Prof. Glen Browder in conjunction with his
public lecture series, "Is America Dying?" Today's column highlights a
portion of lecture number two, which is scheduled for Wednesday,
September 22 in Room 100 Merrill Bldg., entitled "A Systems Theory
of Dysfunctional America."
By Dr. Glen BrowderJacksonville State University The outrageous assertion that America may be dying carries an obligation to conduct a thorough examination, with sound theoretical analysis, of our national health. In this lecture, I want to explain what I mean by the terms "America", "American democracy", and "dying." My conception of "America" does not fit any simple geographic, legalistic, or jurisdictional definition. I use the term "America" connotatively, to express the subjective character as well as the objective parameters of the system within which "we, the people of the United States" conduct our public affairs. My America is what Alexis de Tocqueville billed as "the great experiment ... a spectacle for which the world has not been prepared by the history of the past" (Democracy in America, 1835). My America is the unprecedented pursuit of civic freedom, equality, and justice through a precarious framework of popular self-government. My America is a national experiment in democratic ideals. America's Great Experiment, then, as I see it, is a philosophical and practical exercise in national, democratic self-government, a procedural and substantive exercise designed to answer an important sequential question: (1) Can..., (2) How can. . ., and (3) How far can we pursue democratic ideals through limited, representative government without succumbing to the inherent, destructive tendencies of democracy? How far can an increasingly diverse, divergent, and demanding people push a restrained-but-popular process of governance toward fuzzy and contradictory democratic ideals without damaging that process or those ideals. If, as I have proposed, America is a "national experiment in democratic ideals", then "American democracy" is the practical political process a sort of civic laboratory - for translating our community of ideals into progressive public policy. More normatively, I use the term "American democracy" to refer to the magical mix of people, politics, and government through which our progressive experiment has worked effectively for the past two centuries. My rhetorical contention, of course, is that America is beginning to experience fundamental democratic dysfunction - that American democracy no longer works the way it used to work and that we seem to be tiring of the Great Experiment itself. It is not my contention that America has died. Nor are we comatose. We are very much alive. But America is evidencing regressive civic illness that, without treatment, jeopardizes the future of our national experiment in democratic ideals. Dr. Glen Browder is professor and eminent scholar in American Democracy at Jacksonville State University. For information about his free public lectures, call 256-782-5828. |
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