Renewing the American Experiment

David Korten

Something must happen so as to touch the hearts and souls of men that they will come together, not because the law says it, but because it is natural and right. — Martin Luther King, Stride Toward Freedom, 1958

Summary

America was born as an experiment dedicated to creating a modern democratic nation devoted to the democratic ideals of liberty, justice, and opportunity for all. That experiment remains an unfinished project now placed in peril by a small and determined group of elitists who are intent on rolling back more than 200 years of hard won progress toward the realization of these ideals in America and beyond. Their success in gaining the support even of those who bear the disastrous consequences of their program rests in part on their ability to control the national political dialogue by controlling the stories by which we answer three basic questions: How will we prosper? What will make us secure? And how will we find meaning? These are increasingly serious questions for a great many Americans.

The stories that have come to be accepted as conventional wisdom narrow both the question and the related political debate. “How will we prosper?” is reduced to “What will you do to promote economic growth?” “What will make us secure?” is reduced to “What will you do to protect us from evil people?” “And how will we find meaning?” is reduced to “Will your policies please my jealous and wrathful God?”

Progressive politicians thus find themselves unwittingly reduced to a debate framed by the worldview of a small group of extremists who believe in a system of elite rule and pose an increasingly serious threat to the Ameri-can Experiment in democratic self-governance by ordinary people. This challenge to America’s founding ideals can be countered only by stories that offer better and more inspiring answers to these questions. Progressives face a twofold challenge. We must find new stories that an-swer the larger questions and learn to communicate them in ways that enlarge and redefine the terms of the debate.

The United States of America was founded as a bold experiment designed to demonstrate the possibility of creating a society governed by ordinary citizens that gives full expression to the ideals of liberty, justice, and opportunity for all. In its time it was a truly audacious idea. When the founders boldly declared that all men are created equal and that governments derive their justice powers from the consent of the governed, the evidence of 5,000 years of rule by hereditary emperors, kings, and feudal lords suggested such an idea might even be contrary to human nature.