The American Experiment: Foundations Of Democracy

In his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln posed a question: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” What kind of test, what kind of experiment, does American democracy represent? In classical Greek and Roman experience, democracy appeared to be the most unstable of regimes, prone to faction, revolution, demagogues, and dictators. Founding theorists of modern democracies sought ways to secure the advantages of democratic life, while addressing both the weaknesses identified by the ancients and the peculiar vulnerabilities of modern politics. To do so, we must raise difficult questions about the relations between justice and wisdom, between freedom and liberty, between commercialism and individualism on the one hand, and civic, religious, and moral virtues, on the other.