We cannot help thinking of our own lives as uniquely our own, but if we look more closely, we begin to see how much we shared with strangers of our own age and situation. If we could forget for a moment what was singular about our lives and concentrate instead on what we experienced with everyone else, would it be possible to see ourselves in a new light, less self-dramatizing but possibly more truthful?
We must be unafraid to confront the dark side of progress now, but without losing faith in the human campaign to make life better. This is the conviction that we need to save our planet and ourselves.
When the authority of science and the authority of democracy conflict and the result is a stand-off, a legitimacy vacuum can ensue, with ordinary citizens distrusting government and scientific advisers in equal measure.
Politics is not a vulgar means to a goal, it’s a noble life unto itself, and unless you love it, you can’t do it well. I didn’t get there, but I hope you will.
Representation is the contested relationship at the heart of our democracy. It is contested because the theory and practice of democratic representation have never been in close alignment. In theory, representatives should be either the trustees or the delegates of the citizens who elect them. In practice citizens do not usually share collective interests.
As long as money is moralized as speech, and not understood as power, there is little chance that the republic can put money in its proper place. Without a politics—of redistributive taxation, public goods investment for growth, and rules controlling money in politics—any critique of what money has done to American life is just moralizing.
