CSP 73 Democracy, Liberty, and Equality in the American Experience

The United States of America was founded on the basis of the principles of equality and self-government. Yet how to best carry these foundational commitments into practice has been a perennial topic of disagreement. The polarized and contentious politics of the U.S. today make rediscovering those debates particularly valuable. Is the United States’ vast size an asset for representative democracy, or a liability? Does the Supreme Court’s power to strike down legislation complement self-government, or undermine it? Does religious toleration preserve true faith, or enervate it? Are liberty and equality complementary, or in irreducible tension? Should formerly enslaved people seek to attain equal recognition as American citizens, or pursue militant separatism instead? Looking at political philosophy as well as the writings of statesmen and activists, we will engage with these debates not as objects of historical curiosity, but as pressing questions for the future of the American polity. Reading selections will draw from John Locke, the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers, Alexis de Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Ida Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Angela Davis, among others.