We the People at 250

“We the People.”

They may be the most familiar words in American civic life. We recite them in classrooms, engrave them on public buildings, and invoke them as a declaration that political authority in this country belongs not to a monarch, a ruling class, or the government itself, but to the people.

Yet those words are more than a claim of power. They are an acceptance of responsibility.

If we are the source of our government’s authority, then the preservation of liberty cannot be left to government alone. It cannot be entrusted entirely to constitutions, laws, courts, elections, or public officials. These institutions matter profoundly. They establish rights, restrain power, settle disputes, and provide the structure through which a free people governs itself.

But they cannot create the civic character upon which their success ultimately depends.

Judge Learned Hand understood this when he warned Americans against placing too much faith in institutions alone. Liberty, he argued, must live first in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, law, or court can do much to save it.

His point was not that institutions are unnecessary. It was that institutions cannot preserve values that the people themselves have abandoned.

A constitution can define our rights, but it cannot force us to respect the rights of others. A court can restrain an abuse of power, but it cannot make us reluctant to abuse power in the first place. An election can determine who governs, but it cannot ensure that the winners govern with humility or that the losers remain committed to the legitimacy of the process.

The promise of “We the People” therefore depends on what kind of people we choose to be.

Learned Hand described the spirit of liberty as a spirit that is “not too sure that it is right.” That does not require us to abandon conviction. Democracy does not depend upon citizens who believe in nothing strongly. It depends upon citizens who can believe strongly without believing themselves infallible.

It asks us to consider the interests of others alongside our own. It asks us to listen, not merely while waiting for our turn to speak, but with the possibility that we may learn something. It asks us to recognize that people with whom we deeply disagree remain members of the same political community.

That is the significance of the word “we.”

“We the People” does not mean “we the people who won the last election,” “we the people who share my values,” or “we the people I consider deserving.” It is broad enough to include those who frustrate us, oppose us, vote against us, and see the world differently than we do.

That does not mean all ideas are equally sound or that every action should be tolerated. It does mean that no faction owns the country. No election settles every question forever. No political victory erases the rights or standing of those who lost.

The spirit of liberty requires restraint not only when we are weak, but especially when we are strong.

That is difficult because our political culture increasingly rewards certainty, aggression, and humiliation. We are encouraged to see politics as a contest in which the purpose is not simply to prevail, but to defeat, punish, or silence the other side. Restraint is treated as weakness. Compromise is portrayed as betrayal. Listening is mistaken for surrender.

But liberty cannot mean simply the freedom to get our way.

A society in which everyone claims maximum freedom for themselves and seeks maximum control over others will not remain free for long. It will become a society in which freedom belongs primarily to those ruthless enough to seize power and strong enough to keep it.

The answer is not less democracy. It is more democratic responsibility.

Liberty cannot remain only a private belief. If “We the People” are to govern, then the people must participate in governing.

We often speak of democracy as though it were something we possess rather than something we do. We celebrate elections, but democracy is not confined to Election Day. We praise the Constitution, but constitutional government depends upon habits practiced between elections and far beyond the halls of government.

Democracy lives in public meetings and neighborhood conversations. It lives in the person who organizes others around a concern, serves on a board, writes a letter, questions an official, studies an issue, joins a campaign, speaks before a divided room, or runs for office knowing that defeat is possible.

It lives in the person who loses a vote but returns to the next meeting.

It lives in the official who applies the same standard to allies and critics. It lives in the citizen who defends a right for someone whose views they reject. It lives in the willingness to remain engaged when the process is slow, frustrating, and imperfect.

We rightly celebrate the courage of those who defend the country in uniform. We understand the sacrifice involved in standing a post, facing danger, and serving a cause larger than oneself.

But we have a less developed language for honoring civic courage.

We do not always celebrate the person in the figurative trenches of democracy: the organizer knocking on doors, the election worker protecting a fair process, the candidate enduring scrutiny, the public servant absorbing criticism, or the citizen standing at a microphone to make an argument before neighbors who may disagree.

We remember the person who charged the hill. We less often remember the person who stood before a divided room and tried to find words that might hold a community together.

Yet democracy needs both forms of courage.

The orator has a particular place in this work, not merely the gifted speaker standing on a stage, but every person willing to offer reasons to fellow citizens.

To make an argument is to acknowledge that the listener matters. It is to say that public judgment deserves more than a command, a slogan, or an insult. It is to believe that fellow citizens may be persuaded through evidence, experience, principle, and conscience.

At its best, democratic speech is an act of respect.

That does not mean it must be timid or free from passion. Some moments require moral clarity and forceful disagreement. But democratic persuasion begins with the premise that the other person is a participant, not merely an obstacle.

This is also why we should reconsider how we use the word “political.”

We often call someone “political” as an accusation. We use the term to imply that the person is calculating, partisan, self-interested, or more concerned with winning than governing. We describe an issue as political when we want to suggest that it has been contaminated by ideology or conflict.

Public officials frequently insist that a decision should not be political, as though politics were an impurity from which public life could be cleansed. But in a democracy, politics is not an intrusion into self-government. Politics is the work of self-government.

Politics is how people with different interests, experiences, and convictions decide how they will live together. It is how we determine what we value, what we owe one another, how public resources should be used, what burdens we are willing to share, and what limits we will place upon power.

It includes parties and elections, but it is not confined to them. Politics occurs whenever people organize, advocate, deliberate, negotiate, protest, persuade, or attempt to change the direction of their community.

To be political, in this broader and better sense, is to recognize that we are participants in a common life.

That does not mean everyone must run for office, join a party, or attend every public meeting. Democracy requires many forms of citizenship. One person may organize a neighborhood. Another may serve on a commission. Another may volunteer, teach, protest, donate, write, vote, or take the time to understand an issue before forming an opinion.

The form matters less than the recognition that citizenship carries responsibilities as well as rights.

Political disengagement is not necessarily hostility to democracy. People withdraw for understandable reasons. They may be exhausted, disappointed, distrustful, busy, or convinced that their participation will not matter.

But a culture that treats disengagement as sophistication and political participation as something disreputable cannot sustain self-government indefinitely.

When people retreat from politics because politics appears distasteful, politics does not disappear. Decisions are still made. Power is still exercised. Resources are still allocated. The public square is simply left to those most willing and able to occupy it.

We need not actively oppose democracy to weaken it. Neglect can surrender what direct opposition could not defeat.

“We the People” cannot be a nation of spectators.

The phrase does not describe a passive population that speaks once and then leaves democracy to others. It calls each generation back into the public square. It requires us to speak, listen, organize, vote, serve, persuade, compromise, lose, reconsider, and return.

It requires a willingness to become implicated in the difficult work of collective decision-making.

That work will never be pure. Politics requires choices among imperfect alternatives. It requires alliances with people who do not agree on everything. It exposes our judgment to criticism and our failures to public view. The person who remains detached may preserve a sense of personal purity. The person who participates must accept responsibility for real decisions in an imperfect world.

That is not a flaw in democracy. It is the price of self-government.

Learned Hand was right that liberty lives in the hearts of men and women. But it survives only when it travels from the heart into the habits of citizenship.

It must appear in the courage to participate, the humility to listen, the discipline to accept limits, and the determination to remain part of a common undertaking.

The Constitution begins with “We the People.”

Whether its promise endures depends, as it always has, upon us.

---

Andrew Flynn

Andrew Flynn writes about public leadership, fiscal stewardship, and the systems communities rely on to function well. He is a commissioner in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, works in public finance, and serves as a volunteer firefighter and EMT. Browse the Writing section for more articles, or visit Meet Andrew to learn more.