Our Founding Fathers had very diverse views of how America’s democratic experiment should look when they declared our independence almost 250 years ago. Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson profoundly disagreed about how our functioning democracy should work (one exchange was memorably brought to life on Broadway in Hamilton). The big debates of the Founding Fathers were among a small, select group of men who had more in common with each other than the large swath of people who weren’t in the room.
Almost two and a half centuries later, the United States is a diverse nation still debating what we should look like. We are a pluralistic nation of over 330 million people, with political, religious, and cultural differences. And yet, we are one nation held together by a shared belief in democracy. And within this share belief is our commitment to pluralism, which is the commitment of people – of varying beliefs and backgrounds – to respect each other as equal citizens in a democracy.
As Chris Walsh, Director for Global Policy at the George W. Bush Institute captured in his piece, Pluralism Isn’t Purple, pluralism “provides space for Americans to express their views and practice their beliefs without fear of violent reprisal even when those views and practices conflict with others’ – just as long as they don’t violate the Constitution or other legal protections. Such an approach leaves ample space for discordant views to regularly rub against one another.”
When we are living up to our American ideals, people with deeply held and often foundationally contradictory views respect each other’s rights. We are welcome to try to convince others to agree with us, but we cannot command that they do.
As we show up – online, in our communities, and in the halls of power – we should not just theorize about pluralism, we should live it too, especially when it is challenging. And that is why we believe that democracy is a verb.
Follow the George W. Bush Institute’s Democracy is a Verb series
Links to Other Content
- Media pluralism glossary of terms
- Bush Institute special series: The Pluralism Challenge
- Oklahoma City mayor David Holt on practicing pluralism – video
- Pluralism isn’t purple – Catalyst article
- Why pluralism keeps America strong
- Sparring for Success – Catalyst article
- Practicing pluralism: What we can learn from rural schools – Chris Walsh, William McKenzie
- SMU student’s children’s book encourages pluralism
- Pluralism is how ‘the sausage gets made’ in government – video
