Self-rule

This text suggests that only in appreciating that there are few concrete definitions of history, can we recognize how important democracy's arrival was, how extraordinary its spread has been, and how uncertain its prospects are. As Wiebe explains why the original democracy of the early 19th century represented a sharp break from the past, he recreates the way European visitors contrasted the radical character of American democracy with their own societies. He then discusses the operation of various 19th-century democratic publics, including a nationwide public, the People. Finally, he places democracy's white fraternal world of equals in a larger environment where other Americans who differed by class, race and gender, developed their own relations to democracy. Individualism, once integrated with collective self-governance in the 19th century, becomes the driving force behind 20th-century democracy. During those same years, other ways of defining good government and sound public policy shunt majoritarian practices to one side.
Late in the 20th century, these two themes in the history of American democracy - individualism and majoritarianism - turn on one another in modern democracy's war on itself. Finally, it assesses the polarized state of contemporary American democracy. Suggestions on the meaning and direction of today's democracy are included here.