By Randi Kreiss
In recent months, and perhaps for the first time in our adult lives, many of us have been worrying about the viability and survivability of the great American experiment known as democracy. It has been the only government we have known, and we assumed, perhaps naively, that freedom would ring forever across our land.
I did. I remember my young self, hand across my heart at an elementary school assembly, looking at the flag and reciting the pledge. It was such serious business. My devotion was uncomplicated. I grew up knowing I was lucky to have been born in my time and place.
My dad schooled us early and often on the opportunity America offered his immigrant parents, who fled pogroms and antisemitism in Eastern Europe.
I never traveled overseas without coming back through customs and immigration thinking, “God bless America.” I never visited another country that beckoned me for more than a week or two. I think of myself as a patriot.
When I was a college student and we philosophized about democracy, there seemed only a few and very sensible boundaries. Like don’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Otherwise, free speech felt like a particularly American right. As kids we chanted, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never harm me.”
Now, increasing restrictions on speech are disorienting. Our democracy feels destabilized. How do we speak up and support the least powerful and most in need of American justice without fear of reprisals? How have words — just words, compilations of simple letters — become “triggers” or a forbidden form of expression? Why take a word like d-i-v-e-r-s-i-t-y and scrub it from policy language as if it were an epithet? It means, “The practice of including people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds” — a quintessentially American concept we historically have embraced.
These days, I don’t recognize us.
America on its best day is far from perfect. As an educated adult, I know this. Any country that sanctioned slavery and the internment of citizens carries that brand forever. But we also preserved freedom in World Wars I and II, beat back dictators and welcomed millions of immigrants who helped build the greatest country in the world. We educated the best scientists and led the world in developing vaccines for the most dreaded diseases.
The good, the bad — all of it is true, and the fabric of our nation today is richly threaded with our triumphs. We are all the stronger because we have survived dark times, like the Civil War, and built a society that has been a beacon for freedom around the world.
Within the generous embrace of America’s democratic government there have always been imperfections. Some argue that hard work pays off; others say that not everyone has equal access to either higher education or good jobs. Corruption sometimes tilts the playing field.
I don’t know how to resist the current threats to democracy, except to write and talk about them, to vote and encourage others to vote, to support fair elections. I do know we have to pay attention.
Continuing to educate ourselves and encouraging open political discussions among others can only be a good thing.
We Americans thought of ourselves as a fairly egalitarian society in the pre-MAGA, pre-billionaire era. There was a real thriving middle class when I was growing up, attainable through higher education or apprenticeship and hard work. Nothing seemed out of reach. The deal was that people in business or professions or trades could buy homes for growing families.
Today that deal is broken. Homes are out of reach for many young couples. Food prices are eating up family budgets.
Now, only 250 years after the Declaration of Independence, we observe increasing class distinction in many elements of our culture.
Can we grow through this?
Can we agree that anyone who wants an education can still get it, and that people starting out can find affordable housing? All of it can be true and workable, but we can’t call ourselves a democracy when free speech and economic opportunity are threatened. A democracy embraces all its citizens, and in the best of worlds, welcomes newcomers.
In my lifetime, our imperfect democracy had room for everyone and was moving, in starts and stops, toward inclusivity. Now it seems stalled.
Copyright 2025 Randi Kreiss. Randi can be reached at randik3@aol.com.
