Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Where democracy won in 2022

Where democracy won in 2022

There was plenty of hand wringing over the state of democracy at home and abroad in 2022. Extremists appeared poised to sabotage elections in the U.S., a leading index found half of democratic governments around the world in decline, and Russia’s war against Ukraine placed liberty under direct assault.

Yet 2022 was also the year “the good guys struck back,” as Michael Hirsh wrote in Foreign Policy. Ukrainian forces have thrown Russia on the defensive. Extremist candidates lost in Brazil, France, and in key U.S. midterm contests. In Kenya, the Philippines and elsewhere, elections ended not in chaos, as predicted, but in peaceful transfers of power. In China and Iran, average citizens are rising up.


In the U.S., the House select committee’s investigation of the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol elevated truth over disinformation, and helped trigger a fundamental shift away from extremism, and from the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen.

In August, an NBC News survey found that Americans ranked “threats to democracy” ahead of the economy as their top concern. And in November, the midterms unfolded smoothly and election deniers largely lost, in a contest widely hailed as a win for democracy.

None of this takes away from the substantial threats that still place democracy at risk, including rampant disinformation facilitated by social media and the decline of local newspapers. But those who wish to defend democracy must go beyond bemoaning its demise, as so many news outlets, commentators and authors incessantly do. The story of Democracy’s strengths, which were also on display in 2022, merits notice as well.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

To succeed, the pro-democracy movement “needs to go beyond its present modus operandi, a mix of fatalism and despair and living in perpetual reaction to the right and policy wonkiness and praying for indictments,” argues author Anand Giridharadas. Democracy advocates “can out-compete the fascists and seize the age,” Giridharadas recently wrote in The New York Times, with a more expansive vision that replaces fatalism with hope.

Hope means appreciating that the nation’s partisan divisions are not as intractable as media pundits driven by ratings like to scream. A full 41 percent of Americans identify as Independents, compared with fewer than 30 percent identified with either party, and large majorities of Americans agree on key issues, from same-sex marriage to legalizing cannabis. Hope means celebrating the teens fighting for the right to read “banned books” with lawsuits and protests, and the young voters whose turnout reached its second-highest level in 30 years in the last election.

Hope also means investing in future generations, as Congress recently did with a $23 million appropriation for civic learning in the year-end omnibus spending bill, effectively tripling federal spending on history and civic learning. That bipartisan investment reflects continued support across party lines for civic education, which recent national polling found is supported by close to 80 percent of voters on both sides of the aisle. It was just one of many wins for democracy this year.

Eliza Newlin Carney is a longtime Washington writer, editor and columnist specializing in democracy issues. She is a columnist and former senior editor for The American Prospect, and previously held senior positions at CQ Roll Call and National Journal. She also is founder and president of The Civic Circle, which uses music and the arts to empower young students to understand and participate in democracy.

Read More

Bridging Hearts in a Divided America

In preparation for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's second inauguration in Washington, D.C., security measures have been significantly heightened around the U.S. Capitol and its surroundings on January 18, 2025.

(Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Bridging Hearts in a Divided America

This story is part of the We the Peopleseries, elevating the voices and visibility of the persons most affected by the decisions of elected officials. In this installment, we share the hopes and concerns of people as Donald Trump returns to the White House.

An Arctic blast is gripping the nation’s capital this Inauguration Day, which coincides with Martin Luther King Jr. Day. A rare occurrence since this federal holiday was instituted in 1983. Temperatures are in the single digits, and Donald J. Trump is taking the oath of office inside the Capitol Rotunda instead of being on the steps of the Capitol, making him less visible to his fans who traveled to Washington D.C. for this momentous occasion. What an emblematic scenario for such a unique political moment in history.

Keep ReadingShow less
King's Birmingham Jail Letter in Our Digital Times

Civil Rights Ldr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking into mike after being released fr. prison for leading boycott.

(Photo by Donald Uhrbrock/Getty Images)

King's Birmingham Jail Letter in Our Digital Times

Sixty-two years after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s pen touches paper in a Birmingham jail cell, I contemplate the walls that still divide us. Walls constructed in concrete to enclose Alabama jails, but in Silicon Valley, designed code, algorithms, and newsfeeds. King's legacy and prophetic words from that jail cell pierce our digital age with renewed urgency.

The words of that infamous letter burned with holy discontent – not just anger at injustice, but a more profound spiritual yearning for a beloved community. Witnessing our social fabric fray in digital spaces, I, too, feel that same holy discontent in my spirit. King wrote to white clergymen who called his methods "unwise and untimely." When I scroll through my social media feeds, I see modern versions of King's "white moderate" – those who prefer the absence of tension to the presence of truth. These are the people who click "like" on posts about racial harmony while scrolling past videos of police brutality. They share MLK quotes about dreams while sleeping through our contemporary nightmares.

Keep ReadingShow less
The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself

"Stone of Hope" statue, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, Sunday, January 19, 2014.

(Photo by Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s familiar words, inscribed on his monument in Washington, D.C., now raise the question: Is that true?

A moral universe must, by its very definition, span both space and time. Yet where is the justice for the thousands upon thousands of innocent lives lost over the past year — whether from violence between Ukraine and Russia, or toward Israelis or Palestinians, or in West Darfur? Where is the justice for the hundreds of thousands of “disappeared” in Mexico, Syria, Sri Lanka, and other parts of the world? Where is the justice for the billions of people today increasingly bearing the brunt of climate change, suffering from the longstanding polluting practices of other communities or other countries? Is the “arc” bending the wrong way?

Keep ReadingShow less
A Republic, if we can keep it

American Religious and Civil Rights leader Dr Martin Luther King Jr (1929 - 1968) addresses the crowd on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington, Washington DC, August 28, 1963.

(Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)

A Republic, if we can keep it

Part XXXIV: An Open Letter to President Trump from the American People

Dear President Trump,

Keep ReadingShow less