Democracy—Remaking History’s Armor

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Lisa Saye
June 2, 2025

Sober-minded narratives are a must nowadays. Specifically, the ones that draw no lines in the sand. We don’t need to go to our perspective corners because it’s obvious that we’ve spent too much time in them as it is. While debate can and should be healthy, being consistently apart on everything is not a preferable default of participatory government. Democracy has always been a verb. And as such, it is favorable that we embrace the noisy art of collaboration. We should run toward truth, enlightenment and progress. Doing otherwise is a disservice to the calling we all must work to hear.

Some are writing more and more that the U.S. seems to be in its late stages of democracy. For more than 250 years, our Constitution has been the impassioned anthem of the nation. Now, it seems to be little more than an old document that we ignore as we would any ancient artifact that no longer serves any use. Once our government’s modern armor, the Constitution appears to have lost the boldness of the metal used to construct it. That in particular is a shame.

A true democracy does not risk one minute, one moment or one life over folly, greed or silliness. Anarchy does not hesitate to risk everything in the dismantling of society. The ripping apart of life and liberty is exactly the point. Such goals are a dreadful slander against the stability and progress of civilization. What we do about it says a lot about who we really want to be and if we have the courage to do something about it.

Those who reject accountability in government in turn reject democracy. They also have an opposition to order because order calls for a social, economic and political commitment to equality. If you look closely you’ll notice that their circular glossaries always return to ways to dismantle and to permanently disrupt anything that looks like government. Violating social order is not a true reform of a weak government. It’s a violation against the expectations of decency. Democracy calls for active social thinking in the vein and era it appears and grows. As such, it has survived many stops and many stalls under the pretense and guise of taking something back. Democracy’s survival is more than a notion that it will continue to do so.

For now, civilization must distinguish between what it wants to solve and what it wants to continue. Beating up on each other through policy is immoral and inconsistent with societal progress. Along with being immature, it drains creativity and distracts from real political issues. A friend told me recently that nations should not try to build better things rather they should try to build better people. This has to happen through a structure that is built on a set of solid principles. Democracy is the structure and policy are its principles. Democracy because it promises us the ability to exist outside of the box we were born in. Policy because it legitimizes the movement that free people need to enjoy the right to be whoever they want to be.

Utopias are idealistic fairy tales that are wonderful to imagine. From such daydreams, we can conjure up new ways to do a lot of things. Democracy acknowledges utopia’s limitations and offers a realistic template for a society that works as it expands. Democracy’s structure is a natural part of our deliberate vocation. We know what democracy is capable of. If it helps to lose the ideology, then we know what we are capable of when we aspire for a government that models and practices equal representation, justice and inclusion. If we discard the notions of democracy, then we also discard public administration’s ordered and stable delivery platform.

Public administrators may be in the process of regrouping but they are not lost nor are they defeated. They will set up camp anywhere there is a warm fire with a will to be present for those in need. As far as traditions go, democracy is not a ritual of who bows lower. It is an activist ideology formed when there were no focus groups to run it by. It is a movement that is wholly incompatible with protectionist regimes with their severe limits on freedom. Democracy is an ideology that agitates for balance while requiring purity, authenticity and the desire to do good for others. It is a story that is as old as any other story but whose ending is frankly unimaginable.

The ^@All Is Dream or Risk photo was taken and titled by Lisa Saye.

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Author: Dr. Lisa Saye served as Fulbright Specialist in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and as International Consultant for the United Nations Development Program in The Maldives. She also served as Chair of the Division of Social Sciences and Humanities and as Associate Professor of Public Administration at American University Afghanistan. Dr. Saye can be reached by email at [email protected].

 

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