What are the Foundational Values of Democracy?

In this article from the Guardian, the new Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, argues that the US should embrace “18th century values,” those of the founding leaders of the United States—values Johnson implicitly equates with his own Christian fundamentalism. He argues that, without such values as an underpinning, the US’s system of representative democracy will fail.

There are any number of problems here. There is the lionizing of the “Founding Fathers” (a term I find problematic), a group of fallible men, many of whom owned slaves, as visionaries whose wisdom transcends their era. There is the misrepresentation of their views on religion. While they did see an important role for religion in fostering values and stability in society, they were also Deists and religious pluralists, not fundamentalists. Indeed, they could not have been fundamentalists, since Christian fundamentalism has its roots in the late 19th century as a reaction both against the growing acceptance of human origins in evolution by natural selection and against work to situate Christianity and the Bible in their historical contexts, including by many Protestant churches. And, of course, the founders saw separation of church and state as fundamental to the new republic they were trying to create.

If we are to invoke 18th century values, why note those of Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Man (1790) and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Thomas Paine in The Rights of Man (1792), or William Godwin in his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)? All these works are forerunners of the ideas underlying today’s progressive political movements and are fundamentally at odds with the fundamentalist values Mike Johnson promotes.

Nonetheless, Johnson does raise an important question: What values do we as a society need to uphold to ensure democracy?

Part of the appeal of the right has been their emphasis on community and our duty to others, something that is missing in most contemporary progressive liberal rhetoric with its emphasis on individual rights. Not that liberals are wrong to emphasize rights. Individual rights, including both political rights such as freedom of speech and assembly and economic rights such as healthcare and dignified work, are foundational to a good society. But implicit in this conception of rights is that we have a duty to others—to respect their rights. As free market critics of progressive liberalism point out, we cannot ensure others’ economic rights without the well-off giving up some of their wealth to support universal social programs. Such an approach, however, mediates our duty to others through the government, largely reducing it to being willing to pay taxes.

Many people who support conservative politicians and movements are drawn to them by their explicit promotion of community and duty in language such as “family values” and “personal responsibility.” Many conservative voters are responding more to this language than to specific policy proposals. Indeed, as the enshrining of abortion rights in many conservative states has recently shown, such people may not actually support actual conservative policies. Conservative religious movements also draw people in by giving them a sense of community and belonging. As Karl Marx noted in the next breath after he called religion “the opiate of the masses,” religious communities are “the heart of a heartless world.”

Progressives need to find a language that speaks to the importance of community and responsibility for others without negating—as Mike Johnson’s religious fundamentalism does—people’s individual rights and their ability to engage in creative self-expression and growth. Indeed, Johnson’s ideas are not only not foundational to democracy, but an active threat to it, rejecting philosophical-religious pluralism, promoting a community that is narrowly defined and exclusive, and oppressing and scapegoating those who don’t belong.

The founders of the US were deeply influenced not by Christian fundamentalism but by civic republicanism, which emphasizes both people’s rights within the context of a liberal republic and the importance of civic virtue and people’s engagement with civic life. Whatever the many faults of the founders, there is an important insight here that progressives should recover.

The scholarly work on political democracy confirms the importance of civic virtue. When Trump was first elected president, many political commentators assured us that US democracy was strong and would easily endure his rule. But scholars who study the history and dynamics of democracy warn us that it is fragile. For democracy to thrive, political leaders must be committed to democratic norms and ordinary citizens must be actively engaged in civic life. Trump’s attempted January 6 coup showed that the warnings of scholars are correct. We can be thankful that Trump, while a master manipulator, is not a skilled strategist.

Progressives need to reclaim language that complements the emphasis on individual rights with language that speaks to our commitments to others’ well-being and inclusion in society, regardless of who they are. In the libertarian socialist, democratic socialist and social democratic traditions, there is an emphasis on social solidarity as well as freedom. Feminists emphasize an ethic rooted in care and empathy for others. If progressives want to engage in a robust defense and deepening of democracy, we need to use such language. We need not only a progressive vision of rights but of community and inter-personal and civic responsibility.