Deliberative Democracy
"The answer I settle on‑which is by no means original to me‑requires a shift in metaphors, one that sees our democracy not as a house to be built, but as a conversation to be had. According to this conception, the genius of Madison's design is not that it provides us a fixed blueprint for action, the way a draftsman plots a building's construction. It provides us with a framework and with rules, but fidelity to these rules will not guarantee a just society or assure agreement on what's right. It won't tell us whether abortion is good or bad, a decision for a woman to make or a decision for a legislature. Nor will it tell us whether school prayer is better than no prayer at all.
What the framework of our Constitution can do is organize the way by which we argue about our future. All of its elaborate machinery‑its separation of powers and checks and balances and federalist principles and Bill of Rights‑are designed to force us into a conversation, a "deliberative democracy" in which all citizens are required to engage in a process of testing their ideas against an external reality, persuading others of their point of view, and building shifting alliances of consent. Because power in our government is so diffuse, the process of making law in America compels us to entertain the possibility that we are not always right and to sometimes change our minds; it challenges us to examine our motives and our interests constantly, and suggests that both our individual and collective judgments are at once legitimate and highly fallible."
The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama, Crown Publishers, 2006, p92
What the framework of our Constitution can do is organize the way by which we argue about our future. All of its elaborate machinery‑its separation of powers and checks and balances and federalist principles and Bill of Rights‑are designed to force us into a conversation, a "deliberative democracy" in which all citizens are required to engage in a process of testing their ideas against an external reality, persuading others of their point of view, and building shifting alliances of consent. Because power in our government is so diffuse, the process of making law in America compels us to entertain the possibility that we are not always right and to sometimes change our minds; it challenges us to examine our motives and our interests constantly, and suggests that both our individual and collective judgments are at once legitimate and highly fallible."
The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama, Crown Publishers, 2006, p92
posted by Paul Schumann | 3:14 PM
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