Is the US actually a democracy? | Ganesh Sitaraman | Big Think

Is the US actually a democracy?
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Three essential components of democracy are economic equality, social unity, and a government that acts in the interest of the people. America lacks all three of those components, says Vanderbilt University Law School Professor Ganesh Sitaraman.

"In study after study, political scientists have shown that our government is responsive primarily to the wealthy and interest groups, not to ordinary people," says Sitaraman. "A system of government that is mostly unresponsive to the people is not a democracy at all."

Sitaraman argues that the neoliberal era is what divided America and continues to prevent the country from realizing a true democracy. In this video, he explains the problem with neoliberalism and how a new agenda could create far better opportunities.
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GANESH SITARAMAN:

Ganesh Sitaraman is a Professor of Law and Director at Vanderbilt Law School. He is the author of The Great Democracy: How to Fix Our Politics, Unrig the Economy, and Unite America (Basic Books, 2019), His book, The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution (Knopf, 2017), was named one of The New York Times' 100 notable books of 2017, and The Counterinsurgent‘s Constitution: Law in the Age of Small Wars (Oxford University Press, 2012), which was awarded the 2013 Palmer Prize for Civil Liberties. Professor Sitaraman was on leave from Vanderbilt‘s faculty from 2011 to 2013, serving as Elizabeth Warren‘s policy director during her campaign for the Senate, and then as her senior counsel in the Senate.

Ganesh Sitaraman's latest book is The Great Democracy: How to Fix Our Politics, Unrig the Economy, and Unite America https://amzn.to/30ZdaUu
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TRANSCRIPT:

GANESH SITARAMAN: Part of the reason that we're in this moment of crisis for democracy is that we've largely misunderstood what democracy is. Democracy isn't just about voting in elections, even though that's important. And it's not just about constitutional norms and institutions, even though that's important too. Democracy has always required much, much more.

Since the ancient Greeks and Romans, philosophers and statesmen recognized that democracy could not persist in a society that had too much economic inequality. They thought that either the rich would oppress the poor, creating an oligarchy; or the masses would overthrow the rich with a demagogue leading the way. Either way, you would lose democracy if you had economic inequality. So what was essential to democracy was an economic democracy; a measure of economic equality, no one having too much economic power.

Similarly, when a society becomes deeply divided by race, religion, clan, tribe, or ideology, democracy also becomes difficult to sustain. And the reason why is that democracy requires us to determine our own destiny together, but when we're so divided that we aim to oppose futures, democracy can't succeed.

Lincoln said that "A house divided against itself cannot stand." And this is why social solidarity, a united democracy, bringing people together across differences, across race, across the barriers that seem to be between us, that is so important to democracy. At the same time, neither economic democracy nor social solidarity is going to be possible without having an actual political democracy; a government that is responsive and representative of the people. But, we don't have that today, either.

In study after study, political scientists have shown that our government is responsive, primarily, to the wealthy and interest groups, not to ordinary people. A system of government that is mostly unresponsive to the people is not a democracy at all.

The core challenge today is that we've never actually and truly achieved what democracy requires. Democracy was severely restricted before the liberal era in the mid-20th century, but the people of that era reined-in economic power during the New Deal. They expanded economic opportunity through the GI Bill and investments in the New Frontier. They fought a war on poverty to promote economic equality and build a great society. And in the midst of all those reforms, they struggled fiercely to end Jim Crow, integrate the nation racially, and promote equal rights for women and people of color because they knew that segregation could never mean equality, let alone solidarity.

These efforts, of course, caused massive upheaval. Real democracy was visible on the horizon—but what happened then is that the late ’60s and the ’70s brought warfare and economic and social and...

Read the full transcript at https://bigthink.com/videos/is-us-actually-a-democracy