The Spirit of Democracy and the Rhetoric of Excess

Abstract

If militarism violates the ideals of liberty and justice in one way, and rapidly increasing social stratification violates them in another, then American democracy is in crisis. A culture of democratic accountability will survive only if citizens revive the concerns that animated the great reform movements of the past, from abolitionism to civil rights. It is crucial, when reasoning about practical matters, not only to admit how grave one's situation is, but also to resist despair. Therefore, the fate of democracy depends, to some significant degree, on how we choose to describe the crisis. Saying that we have already entered the new dark ages or a post-democratic era may prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, because anyone who accepts this message is apt to give up on the hard work of organizing and contestation that is needed to hold political representatives accountable to the people. This paper asks how one might strike the right balance between accuracy and hope in describing the democracy's current troubles. After saying what I mean by democracy and what I think the current threats to it are, I respond to Romand Coles's criticisms of reservations I have expressed before about rhetorical excess in the works of Stanley Hauerwas, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Richard Rorty. This leads to a discussion of several points raised against me by Hauerwas. A digression offers some of my reasons for doubting that John Howard Yoder's biblical scholarship vindicates Hauerwas's version of pacifism. The paper concludes by arguing that Sheldon Wolin's work on the evisceration of democracy, though admirably accurate in its treatment of the dangers posed by empire and capital, abandons the project of democratic accountability too quickly in favor of the romance of the fugitive.

Disorienting Cosmopolitanism: Democratic Accountability and the Politics of Disruption

“…It also refers to the spirit that animates those institutions when they are functioning well and resists them when they are not. 26 As radical and agonistic democrats such as Romand Coles, William Connolly, Chantal Mouffe, and Bonnie Honig, among others, have argued, democracy is best conceived not as a static accomplishment but as a process and project inherently susceptible to disruption and in constant need for regeneration. From this angle, the point of democratic politics is not to fix political struggles with impositions of sovereign order or by identifying final, rational, and neutral decision procedures.…”

BODY POLITICS AND THE POLITICS OF BODIES: Racism and Hauerwasian Theopolitics

“…More recently, these concerns have coalesced into a more focused tripartite objection: (1) elision of the multiple membership of Christians; (2) evasion of Christian responsibility for disordered social arrangements; and (3) a tendency toward self‐righteousness, denying the disorder of ecclesial arrangements (2007) 17 . While Stout concedes that Hauerwas has affirmed multiple membership and a measure of Christian responsibility for social arrangements “in the fine print,” he asks for more than such begrudging concession (2007).…”

Assessing the Augustinian Democrats

“…See also Springs et al 2014, 419–21, 435 and Stout . For other symposia on Democracy and Tradition , see Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 87.3/4 (2004) and Journal of Religious Ethics 33.4 (December 2005). …”

“…Also like them, he finds much inspiration in Augustine’s thought, especially his City of God . Indeed, these factors together eventuate more so for Bretherton than for the others in an explicit championing of democratic organizing of the kind Stout himself endorses in Democracy and Tradition ’s sequel, Blessed Are the Organized (Stout ). So, why not include Bretherton among those I call Augustinian democrats?…”