Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

The Civic Voice: Why democracy needs good news

Speaker Nancy Pelosi at an event for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act

Voting rights legislation named for the late Rep. John Lewis is a potential bright spot for democracy, writes Carney.

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Eliza Newlin Carney is a journalist and founder of The Civic Circle, which uses the arts to empower young students to understand and participate in democracy. This is the first in Carney's new monthly column, The Civic Voice.

Author and policy expert Robert Kagan drew broad notice with his Washington Post essay declaring that the nation is "already in a constitutional crisis" and may be on the cusp of "mass violence," but he is hardly the first to forecast democracy's demise.

Headlines like "Will 2024 Be the Year American Democracy Dies?" and books with titles like "How Democracies Die" and "Twilight of Democracy" have become commonplace in the post-Trump era.

The apocalyptic tone of much democracy writing is unsurprising given the magnitude of the crises facing the nation and world. But there is a danger that bleak alarmism can itself corrode democracy still further. The "genre of disaster prediction," as newsletter writer Robert Hubbell dubbed it in his response to Kagan, tends to stoke paralysis and despair.

This very demoralization is toxic to democracy. When the Economist Intelligence Unit first downgraded the United States from a "full" to a "flawed" democracy in 2017, it was because public trust in political institutions had tanked. "Popular confidence in government and political parties is a vital component of the concept of democracy" embodied by the index, the report noted.

When journalists, thought leaders and even democracy advocates harp exclusively on the ways government and institutions have failed, citizens lose faith. And without at least some faith in the system, Americans drop out. If all is lost in any case, why vote, speak up, follow the news, or engage in community and civic life?

That's why democracy advocates must go beyond prophesying doom and do the hard work of envisioning, and championing, a path forward. It's not that dire warnings aren't called for, or threats not real. It's that raising the alarm is not enough. Indeed, relentless doomsaying risks obscuring the opportunities that can arise from moments of disruption.

This column, The Civic Voice, will spotlight civic solutions and success stories as an antidote to 'round-the-clock bad news. As solutions-focused sites like the Solutions Journalism Network, the Good News Network and the new online magazine Reasons to Be Cheerful attest, Americans are thirsty for a bit of hope.

The value of good news goes beyond spreading cheer. Publishing a story about what's working "is the ultimate form of holding power to account," said Reasons to Be Cheerful co-editor Christine McLaren in an interview. That's because "it's giving people a story to point to and say, 'Look! It doesn't need to be this way! There are people doing it differently and here's how.'"

Spreading good news may sound "corny," acknowledged journalist Roxanne Patel Shepelavy, writing about "Where to Find Hope" in The Philadelphia Citizen. But hope is more important than ever, "because we can't heal what ails us if we don't think a cure exists."

So where can democracy advocates find hope? Here are a few signs that American democracy, while buffeted on many fronts, has as much (if not more) potential to revive and thrive as to collapse with a whimper.

Voting Rights. The unprecedented state-level assault on voting rights since the 2020 election, stoked by Donald Trump's "Big Lie," constitutes perhaps the most direct threat to American democracy today.

Yet on the good-news front, Arizona Republicans' highly criticized 2020 vote audit reaffirmed that "truth is truth,"and gave President Biden an even bigger win. And the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore key Voting Rights Act protections, is winning serious attention on Capitol Hill.

A surprising number of states, moreover, are making it easier to vote, not harder. While 19 states have enacted 33 laws that limit voting since the 2020 election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, the number of laws that expanded voter access is actually far larger, totaling 62 in 25 states.

These laws to facilitate voting, with measures like expanded early nd mail-in voting, "do not balance the scales," the Brennan Center asserts. But according to The Washington Post's Perry Bacon Jr., the voting rights expansion is one of several "groundbreaking initiatives" in blue states, from "Baby Bonds" in Connecticut to greenhouse gas cuts in Oregon, that offer "a vision for a better America."

Constitutional Reforms. On Capitol Hill, as breathless reports remind us daily, partisan and intraparty disputes have stalled infrastructure legislation and placed the nation at risk of default. But such congressional stalemates themselves may usher in important constitutional changes, argued John F. Kowal and Wilfred U. Codrington III recently in Politico.

Constitutional amendments tend to come in waves and "typically have followed periods of deep division and gridlock like ours," wrote Kowal and Codrington, who authored a book on the topic. "In fact, history suggests that periods of extreme political polarization, when the normal channels of legal change are blocked off due to partisan gridlock and regional divides, can usher in periods of constitutional reform to get the political system functioning again."

People Power. Election law expert Richard Hasen's law review article warning that partisans in state legislatures, election offices and even the Supreme Court may usurp voters' choices in 2024 was plenty sobering.

But Hasen's article also emphasized that voters have a way of having the last word. He noted that public pushback helped defeat some of the worst elements of recent state-level voting restrictions, and that organizing and political action "will be needed to reinforce rule-of-law norms in elections." He also suggested "preparing for mass, peaceful protests in the event of attempts to subvert fair election outcomes."

Hasen's article prompted yet another flurry of articles on democracy's possible collapse. But Hasen's analysis spoke not just of gloom, but also hope. Democracy will be stronger if the hopeful side of the story gets out as well.

Read More

When Democracy’s Symbols Get Hijacked: How the Far Right Co-Opted Classical Imagery
brown concrete building under blue sky during daytime
Photo by Darryl Low on Unsplash

When Democracy’s Symbols Get Hijacked: How the Far Right Co-Opted Classical Imagery

For generations, Americans have surrounded themselves with the symbols of ancient Greece and Rome: marble columns, laurel wreaths, Roman eagles, and the fasces. These icons, carved into our government buildings and featured on our currency, were intended to embody democracy, civic virtue, and republican ideals.

But in recent years, far-right movements in the U.S. and abroad have hijacked these classical images, repackaging them into symbols of exclusion, militarism, and authoritarian nostalgia.

Keep ReadingShow less
Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

The B-2 "Spirit" Stealth Bomber flys over the 136th Rose Parade Presented By Honda on Jan. 1, 2025, in Pasadena, California. (Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

After a short and successful war with Iraq, President George H.W. Bush claimed in 1991 that “the ghosts of Vietnam have been laid to rest beneath the sands of the Arabian desert.” Bush was referring to what was commonly called the “Vietnam syndrome.” The idea was that the Vietnam War had so scarred the American psyche that we forever lost confidence in American power.

The elder President Bush was partially right. The first Iraq war was certainly popular. And his successor, President Clinton, used American power — in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere — with the general approval of the media and the public.

Keep ReadingShow less
Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are
a close up of a typewriter with the word conspiracy on it

Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are

The Comet Ping Pong Pizzagate shooting, the plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a man’s livestreamed beheading of his father last year were all fueled by conspiracy theories. But while the headlines suggest that conspiratorial thinking is on the rise, this is not the case. Research points to no increase in conspiratorial thinking. Still, to a more dangerous reality: the conspiracies taking hold and being amplified by political ideologues are increasingly correlated with violence against particular groups. Fortunately, promising new research points to actions we can take to reduce conspiratorial thinking in communities across the US.

Some journalists claim that this is “a golden age of conspiracy theories,” and the public agrees. As of 2022, 59% of Americans think that people are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories today than 25 years ago, and 73% of Americans think conspiracy theories are “out of control.” Most blame this perceived increase on the role of social media and the internet.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donald Trump
President Donald Trump
Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Give Me Liberty or a Tinpot Dictator

Peggy Noonan has been a voice of conservative reflection for The Wall Street Journal since leaving the Ronald Reagan administration as his primary speechwriter. Five of Noonan’s books have been New York Times bestsellers. Consuming every word of her weekly column keeps me politically balanced.

In her June 14-15 column titled “America is losing sight of its political culture,” she referred to and elaborated on our 47th president being America’s Mr. Tinpot Dictator. This phrase, often used to describe a leader who acts like a dictator, with delusions of grandeur and authoritarian tendencies, struck a chord. Following the title about Mr. Trump, I pursued investigative research on the topic.

Keep ReadingShow less