Democracy's Discontent by Michael J. Sandel
“The 1990s were a heady time. The Cold War had ended, and America’s version of liberal capitalism seemed triumphant. And yet, amid the peace and prosperity, anxieties about the project of self-government could be glimpsed beneath the surface.”
Fast forward to 2023, democracy’s discontent persists. Abetted by pandemic, hyper partisanship, recalcitrant racial injustice, and toxic social media, the discontent is now more acute than it was a quarter century ago— more rancorous, even lethal.
Political philosophy seems often to reside at a distance from the world. Principles are one thing, politics another, and even our best efforts to live up to our ideals seldom fully succeed.
Philosophy may indulge our moral aspirations, but politics deals in recalcitrant facts. Indeed, some would say the trouble with American democracy is that they take their ideals too seriously, that their zeal for reform outruns their respect for the gap between theory and practice. Yet, if political philosophy is unrealizable in one sense, it is unavoidable in another. This is the sense in which philosophy inhabits the world from the start; our practices and institutions are embodiments of theory. We could hardly describe our political life, much less engage in it, without recourse to a language laden with theory – of rights and obligations, citizenship and freedom, democracy and law.
In the book Democracy’s Discontent, Sandel illustrates that America’s inchoate anxieties and the defect lie in the impoverished vision of civic responsibilities and community shared by Democrats and Republicans alike. The growing public mistrust in the federal government, whose manifestations range from the conservative sweep of Congress in the last election to the Oklahoma City bombing, can be addressed only by re-evaluating the liberal assumption that government should be neutral on the question of the good life, and by putting in its place a social-democratic concern for the spiritual well-being of the citizenry. The utilitarian calculus of the past has helped preserve individual liberties, Sandel observes, but it finds little room for weighing the finer questions of morality in recommending action.
For instance, Sandel remarks, minimalist liberalism of the sort that is practiced today could scarcely find room for the antislavery arguments of the abolitionists a century and a half ago, relying as those arguments did on “appeals to comprehensive moral ideals”. This indifference to the character of the citizenry, Sandel adds, is not the province of liberalism alone; where liberals have defended several rights on the grounds that government has no place in moral issues, conservatives have likewise argued for laissez-faire economic policies, claiming government should be neutral toward the outcomes of a market economy.
This is a book rich in ideas, but not in blueprints for action. Sandel is strong on tracking the history of this value-neutralization of government; he is less successful in identifying the particulars of a practical yet value-laden ethic that can repair the civic life on which democracy depends while not trampling on anyone's liberties—one of the thorny dilemmas of current reformist politics. Yet, I still find massive value in his writings. The three pillars of justice: Maximizing utility, protecting liberty, and cultivating virtues will inevitably conflict with one another in various moral dilemmas; yet, simply to openly discussing them will likely get us one step closer to a solution.
