It’s possible that no one will read any of these words. But I am counting on the possibility, or threat, that someone else might read them to prod me to write each day, and to provoke me to write as well as I am able, and to prevent me from obsessing over the difference between what I actually write and what I imagine it could be, to the point of not showing any of my writing at all.

Democracy is where I want to start. There are wonderful advantages to living in a democratic society, none less perhaps than the freedoms granted to each person by each other person, simply by knowing that the protections which guard other people’s freedoms must be honored because they are also the protections that guard our own. The same laws and conventions that protect my own freedom of thought, words, and action, also protect the thoughts, words, and actions of every other person. This mutual sense of equal freedom for all is both the source and direction of the moral strength and spiritual foundation of democracy. The reciprocity of the golden rule, in all of its forms, is the source from which democracy draws its strength, and the attempt to include everyone in this reciprocity of equality shows the direction that democracy must travel.

As a democracy gets closer to equal freedom for all, the spirit of democracy feeds our internal senses of fairness and morality, and shows itself more and more strongly in our day to day moments of courtesy and appreciation for others.

However, democracy shares the planet with competitors and predators. Our ways of living together are young. Our form of government is inexperienced, with a lack of history to give us guidance. Our path of promise and potential faces challenges from much more experienced forms of government and domination that have millennia of history and knowledge behind them, experience that has deepened and sharpened their strategies of survival, power, and oppression.

In this competitive ecosystem, a young democracy, formed on ideals and vision rather than experience, has a difficult task merely to stay afloat, particularly because democracy is often, and understandably, seen as a threat to non-democratic regimes. Democracy does have one advantage that regimes which lead by oppression do not: every person on this globe who feels a desire for more freedoms than they are granted by their own culture and government will naturally feel a deep desire to be part of a democracy that will give them the same freedoms of thought, speech, and action that other people have.

The constitution of the United States was the first tool of its kind. It’s a tool because it has a purpose, a use, a reason for its existence: to establish and sustain a democratic government and culture. Being the first tool for modern democracy, that constitution could not avoid mistakes and errors that could only have been prevented through the wisdom that arises from experience. And being born before the industrial revolution in this country, that constitution could not in any way anticipate or address many of the problems and challenges facing our democracy today. In addition, our human tendency to accept or tolerate many of the ways of thinking that we are raised with, in spite of our deep knowledge that they are wrong, prevented many of the founders and authors of the constitution from truly understanding how deeply immoral certain practices were. The strengths of democracy are unique, but so are its weaknesses. We cannot be so arrogant to think that our democracy and constitution are the final and best versions, or that democracy itself cannot fade into the dusty catalogs of history. Arrogance will not give attention to our weaknesses, and those weaknesses will, of course, lead to the fall of democracy.

The strengths of democracy are quite different than the strengths of totalitarian regimes. When we try to defend ourselves using the techniques found in history, that is, the techniques of totalitarian regimes, we find that our democratic spirit and values are compromised. Our democratic strengths are different than the examples found before us, and we are inexperienced in using the strengths that we have discovered. But a democracy must search for the powers that it possesses by virtue of being a democracy, and use those powers to defend itself. Only with this kind of consistency can a democracy not be pulled in two directions, eventually to be pulled apart.

In every direction we look these days, democracy is being pulled apart. The foundation of our own democracy was weak, unavoidably. The power of the people was not given adequate protection against forces that would eventually overwhelm them, financially, militarily, and technologically, forces that could not have been anticipated by the founders. The idea of the founders that only some people should have representation was wrong. The new founders of the new democracy that must replace our current version will have knowledge, perspective, and experience to draw from that the original founders did not.

The strength of democracy is found first in the future potential of democracy, and secondly in the fear of losing the actual democracy we live in to an oppressive form of government. The promise of democracy will move forward the practice of democracy. The fear of losing democracy will prevent people from taking it for granted and give them the determination to do whatever is necessary to protect the democracy.

In short, the new democracy must anticipate threats to the people’s power to rule themselves, and take measures to prevent those threats from diluting that power. The new democracy must develop strategic defenses and bureaucratic practices that are consistent with the values and unique strengths and powers of democracy. And it must find new ways of doing things that, through the generosity of democracy, spread the spirit of democracy into every nook and cranny of the country. The new democracy must, with great wisdom, anticipate the challenges of the future, take advantage of the resources of the present, and learn from the experiences of the past.