I just finished reading "Democracy Matters" by Cornell West, and I have to say it is one of those "framing texts" that gives the reader (well, at least me) a new lens with which to view the struggles of our society today. It’s one of those books makes me want to find five or six other people who have read it and just start talking about it to see if I actually understood what I just read… to see if the parts of the text that resonated so deeply with me were the pieces that resonated with others.

At the fundamental root of West’s argument is that our democratic ideal in this country is being subsumed by our imperialist, materialist, capitalist — and ultimately nihilist — policies. For me, I’ve long expressed this as what can be seen as the tension between our democratic and free market ideals. At our best in this society, that tension is a healthy one… one that recognizes the sovereignty of every human while also promoting a tempered meritocracy (of ideas, of goods and services, etc) where the purpose of government is to hold in check the worst abuses of what that market can create. Sadly, the past twenty-five years of our American experiment have, in my mind, thrown this tension greatly out of balance to the point where I have deep concerns about the health of the American democratic experiment.

Powerfully, West lays out the argument that we need — that we can be devout and love justice — that we can be powerful believers in the American democratic ideal while deeply rejecting the path of our current government (o.k. — lots of folks do that, but he does it very well.) And he also draws a very powerful distinction between the traditions of what he calls prophetic religious belief and Constantian religious belief. In the first, there is a deep commitment to justice, wisdom and love of all people, while the second is in the service of empire. His argument that people of prophetic faith must reclaim the debate in our public discourse is well-heeded and again resonates with me on a deep and powerful level.

This last piece is what I want to focus on for a moment. One of the deep abiding sadnesses for me when I look across the political landscape is the co-opting by the right-wing of the religious agenda in this country. Where is, as West mentions, the deep abiding belief of humility and justice that drove MLK to become the man that he was? How is it that we see a coalition of reactionary religious institutions that cuts across denominations and religions defend imperialist policies both at home and abroad? How is it that we have allowed a narrow slice of the socio-religious spectrum to define what is and is not "devout?" How did we get here? (And this is why Jimmy Carter’s latest text: Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis is next on my reading list.)

I grew up schooled in a progressive tradition that saw coalitions of progressive Jews, Christians and non-religous people working to better our society. Certainly, I derive much of my own sense of social justice and progressive belief from the long history of social activism within the American Jewish tradition. And, indeed, my own political maturation meant dealing with the search for difficult answers as a Jew who believed deeply in the need for Israel while also seeing the powerful distortion of humanity that was taking place in Israel as both oppressor and oppressed where (and are) twisted by the politics of the Middle East — and West writes powerfully about how that conflict is a painful focus point of our need for justice and need for security — of idealistic hope for democractic ideals and our nation’s imperial tendancies.

(On a personal and hopefully funny note, I was fortunate to work for and with a wonderful Congressman, Peter Kostmayer, when I was in high school, and he was kind and generous with me to debate me on my beliefs on Israel which led to a moment when I got to introduce him as a speaker at my high school, at which point he said, "Thank you, Chris… so… still a hawk on Israel?" Embarrassing… but funny.)

West’s ability to reframe the debate, not between the religious and the godless in our American (and world) society, but between the imperialist and democratic, is powerful. His reminder that at the heart of the traditions of Judiasm, Islam, Christianity — and the American transcendental and extistential movemetns — is the value of humility — that we must never think that we are so powerful, so righteous that we are beyond questioning ourselves and our own values. We must, even in our own passion and fervor to change the world, do so with bowed heads, in service to something greater than ourselves. For me, it does not need to be a God — it need only be in service to the greater notion of humanity that binds us all. It needs to be in service to an understanding that our shared humanity means that I am my brother’s (and sister’s) keeper and that the greatest value we can serve is a love of that shared humanity that leads to wisdom, acceptance of difference, and a passion for social justice. It is represented in West’s book in many ways, from the religious "propehtic tradition" that he speaks of to the Socratic questioning that led to the Athenian democratic experiment. And it leads to West’s desire to engage beyond the ivory towers of academia to the world of hip-hop and youth culture.

And for me, it leads us back to our schools. Behind all of this is the notion of what we’re trying to do at SLA with the ideal of inquiry-based education. We must be willing to question, to examine, to reseach and to find answers to not just the scientific questions but to the profoundly philosophical questions that we all, teachers and students all, face in the coming days of our society. We must be willing to ask the hardest questions, and we hopefully will look both inward and outward as we come up with our own answers. I truly believe that we have to start social justice on the personal level. It starts with the way we treat one another — with humility, kindness and care — and then expands from there.

We must remember that our democratic ideals and our desire for security, wealth, surity are often in conflict, and we never conflate the two. We should ask ourselves what we are willing to live with, and what actions, locally, nationally and internationally, stand in stark contrast to the ideals of a democratic nation. And we must face our own internal inconsistancies and hypocracies as we strive not to become as shrill as those who would try to drown us out.

It is this questioning, this process, this on-going marriage of the life of the mind and the world of the public sphere, that should be the cornerstone of our most democratic institutions in this country — our public schools. It is one hell of a scary ideal to hold ourselves too… one that we can expect to always fall short of, as we deal with the realities of schooling today and our own flawed humanity, but it should remain a goal for us to work toward at all times.

This barely scratches the surface of the depth of "Democracy Matters," but this is at least the start of a long personal interaction with his text. In liu of a real-time book club, if you’re read it, please let me know what you thought… As many of the folks I admire in the education blog world say, this medium is about conversation… I think it’s time that I end this entry, take a deep breath and see what other folks have to say.