The Third Founding Declaration
Written constitutions do not by themselves create the moral world that sustains them. Elections cannot manufacture mutual trust, nor can courts legislate cultural legitimacy. Our nation’s future relies on us working through our differences to rebuild the shared horizon of meaning that makes democratic self-government possible.
The core problem isn’t politics—it’s culture.
Renewal of our democratic life depends upon a deeper public culture: beliefs and practices that tell us what freedom is for, what justice requires, why equality matters, why toleration is necessary, what we owe those with whom we disagree, what constitutes a legitimate use of power, and why democracy is worth preserving in the first place.
“The challenge, as we see it, is not simply to diagnose democratic dysfunction, but to help institutions of civil society recover their capacity to form the habits, dispositions, and shared understandings upon which democratic life ultimately depends.”
JAMES DAVISON HUNTER
A vibrant democracy requires shared ideals.
The hard work of rebuilding our nation is the task of working through our differences to address real problems that matter to us all. This work will bear fruit if rooted in at least four enduring commitments that embody the highest ideals of American character, which even today can be found in people of all convictions and persuasions.
A COMMITMENT TO:
restore an ethics of inherent human dignity and respect.
A COMMITMENT TO:
work through social and political differences with discourse rooted in truth, civility, and toleration.
A COMMITMENT TO:
depoliticize American institutions that exist to serve the public good.
A COMMITMENT TO:
a government that works for Americans, not on or through them.
Rebuilding takes all of us.
The work ahead will require many partners and stakeholders, many institutions, and many different ways of seeing the problem. A non-partisan endeavor, the Third Founding takes no side other than the side of those citizens—conservative, moderate, and progressive—who see themselves as Americans first, before they see themselves as members of any other political party or movement.
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