β Scribed by Christopher T. Gates
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Our brief acquaintance with the twenty-first century already indicates that all our institutions-public, private, and nonprofit-need to reexamine the role they play in the broad processes of strengthening democracy, encouraging civic engagement, and building better communities. Given the range of challenges we face, it is no longer enough for each of us to exist and work in our separate silos, doing our own work and leaving the public agenda to others. We must find ways to transform the concept of public purpose, the definition of the public good, and the determination of the public agenda.
In old civics books, the division of societal responsibilities was clearly laid out. It was the private sector' s job to create jobs and wealth, it was the public sector' s job to identify the public agenda and provide for the public good, and it was the nonprofit sector' s job to encourage and direct volunteerism and philanthropy. The implications of this model for citizenship were equally clear. It became the citizen' s job to vote once every two years and, in that way, turn over the responsibility for making things better to those working in the public sector. That is the traditional definition of what people call representative democracy, where leaders are elected to represent the will of the people, allowing citizens to trust that those leaders will solve society' s problems.
Yet one can make the case that this was not how the framers of our republic intended our society and political system to function. Citizenship was never intended to be as passive as it has become in this country over the past several decades. In his highly regarded book Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville described what he found in this country over the nine months he spent traveling here in 1831-1832. He was particularly struck by what he referred to as America' s "associational life," writing, "Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions, constantly form associations . . . religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive . . . to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries. . . ." 1 Our nation was founded out of a
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