Renovating Democracy
Democracy is worth believing in. Democracy is worth working for.
Renovating Democracy
Imagine democracy as the house we were born in. Our ancestors built it; our grandparents added rooms; our parents, some new decor. Though we barely chose to be, we grew here; and here we now stand, adults, looking around at the damages of time, responsible for this old house which, while still grand, could clearly use some work.
There are those members of the family who love to complain about things. You know the type— sitting directly under the leak in the roof, bemoaning the drip in a bid for attention. Some love to blame others in the house for our problems, trying to absolve themselves from responsibility. Some— bless their hearts— even talk of tearing it down, or selling it to buy an imaginary castle.
As if we could ever do that. As if the house weren’t made of ourselves, made of everything we’ve created together. As if we could ever escape this inextricably shared life— these umbilical cords between us, these walls of living fingerprints, these thoughts like breaths of other voices.
The Renovator doesn’t complain or blame, spectate or ironize; the Renovator wants to build and rebuild. The Renovator rolls up their sleeves, sketches a solution, and squeezes the drill-trigger with an experimental whirrrrr. We’re not so much against something as for something: Democracy.
Democracy, out of all the ways people have organized their shared lives, recognizes that the house is made of everyone, inescapably; it leans into the fact that our shared lives are woven by a web of relationships we could never truly disentangle from ourselves. Even people we once tried to shut out are still, inevitably, co-creators of the house. For everyone’s benefit, everyone deserves to be heard; everyone has both a right and responsibility to contribute to our home’s renovation. This is an essential recognition of basic human dignity, and it’s also a pragmatic way to open the world to our widest practical benefit. We tend to be better off when we listen, learn about the rest of our family, and agree on some house rules so we can consciously co-create a better shared life in which everyone participates and everyone prospers.
The ideal of democracy encourages us to pursue the process of communication as deeply as we can, putting the door in dialogue with the window for the sake of building an evermore beautiful, liberating, and creative shared home. It recognizes that the pursuit of mutual understanding is essential to our many pursuits of happiness.
Belief in democracy is belief in human potential. Democracy embraces the truth that liberty tends to grow through interconnection. Dialogue with others enriches my own knowledge; working with others increases my own power. By allowing every human being full participation in public life, and full access to the fertile fruits of public life, every democratic citizen can grow to possess capabilities greater than the kings of old could have ever conceived. By empowering others to develop and express their full potential within agreed-upon rules of fair play, we expand our own potential; my liberty has grown thanks to books written by former slaves, electricity and telephones invented by immigrants, paths beaten by other hikers. All too often we focus on the ways in which one’s personal liberties conflict with another’s, or conflict with the liberty of the whole; but much more important are the ways in which our liberties are symbiotic, the ways in which we empower one another.
Belief in democracy and human potential is justified in light of the history of this American experiment that has, despite all its faults, expanded the human spirit wider than our ancestors’ wildest dreams. Furthermore, this belief implies an even wider democratic vista of human potential opening out into an unimaginably rich future— if only we are willing to keep faith, maintain the work our ancestors began, and improve the essential conditions of mutual flourishing. Shared freedom compounds in the long run, but that’s easy to forget when the road at our feet gets bumpy, and close fog clouds the distance to the stars. That’s why the dream of democracy requires faith. One of The Renovator’s roles will be to reignite this faith, so that we can forge a supermajority for constitutional democracy and convince the rest of the family to help us fix up the house.
But the best way to inspire is through leading by example and getting to work. So first, we need to gather those family members already prepared to start renovating— this, dear reader, likely includes you— so that we can discuss our game plan. The Renovator is the place for this discussion: discussion about what democracy is and what it could be, discussion about its current threats and how to face them, discussion about specific problems and specific solutions. Democracy is, at bottom, a discourse— the Renovator is where we can discuss the very thing that makes productive discourse even possible.
So join us. Read, respond, subscribe. Pitch us an article, or send us a dispatch from democracy renovation efforts in your town, your state. Tell your friends. Better yet, get your friends to help you propose ranked-choice voting in your next local election, or to help share civic education materials with your town’s middle-schoolers. There’s a lot of work to be done; luckily, it’s more fun together, and there’s a lot of us willing to work. After all, it’s our house. It has good bones.
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Aidan Fitzsimons is a member of The Renovator Editorial Board. He writes about America here and at Beatin’ Paths.
Acknowledgements—
This essay gratefully bears the inspirational fingerprints of Danielle Allen, E.J. Dionne, William James, John Dewey, and many others who have kept faith in democracy aflame from generation to generation.
Dig the house metaphor, since talking about “democracy” in the abstract can feel vacuous. It also reminds us that, as anyone who’s tried to fix up a house or a car knows, renovation means trial and failure. The point isn’t to get it right the first time but to have a bias towards action. More is gained from the effort to struggle with and master the brute reality of things, like a leaky roof, than from endless preparation. Humans are pretty good at coming up with fixes. After a couple of tries, chances are the roof will at least be a little less leaky; a less leaky roof is better than no roof at all!
As much as anyone, I appreciate the appeal of allusions to democracy. Democracy has ancient roots, and many say democracy is what we have and what we should want. But is it? Is it what we have? Is it what we should want? Athenian democracy highlights how democracy can be (and even how it was in our own history) far too tyrannical and oppressive to be something we should want, and it isn't what we have. The Golden Age of Greece was the Athenian democracy. But Athens didn't allow women to vote and it relied to a great extent on slavery. See, e.g., https://www.history.com/articles/ancient-greece-democracy and
https://greekreporter.com/2025/07/16/rights-role-slaves-ancient-athens-greece/. As John Stuart Mill highlighted in "On Liberty" in 1859 (when democracy in the U.S. supported slavery more harsh than in Athens), democracy easily can mean nothing better than "the tyranny of the majority."
Article IV of our Constitution emphasizes that the U.S. and states have a "Republican Form of Government." James Madison was the best I've seen at explaining what we actually have and why. Madison truly earned the titles the people bestowed on him of Father of the Constitution and Father of the Bill of Rights. In Federalist No. 51, to help persuade Americans to ratify our Constitution, Madison clarified how and why power was arranged and allocated the way it was in our Constitution:
"In the compound republic of America," the supreme power is in the sovereign people and only "the [portions of] power surrendered [vested] by the people is first divided between two distinct governments [national and state (aka, “federalism”], and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments [legislative, executive and judicial (aka “separation of powers”)]. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself."
"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige [government] to control itself. A dependence on the people [e.g. via elections and the freedom of speech and press] is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. This policy of [ensuring] opposite and rival interests [by constitutional] distributions of power [has a profoundly important purpose:] the constant aim is to divide and arrange the [power of various] offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other that the private interest of every [public servant] may be a sentinel over the public rights."
When Madison presented to the First Congress on June 8, 1789, his proposals on how to improve on our original Constitution, he highlighted crucial truths about the power of the people, as well as how all power was limited and restrained by our Constitution.
First, Madison expressed explicitly the most important principle implicit in our Constitution--the sovereignty of the people. Such sovereignty already was implicit in the words and structure of the Constitution, including its first words ("We the People" do "ordain and establish this Constitution" to "establish Justice" and "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves") and the first sentence of Articles I, II and III (emphasizing that the People, themselves, "vested" power (and only limited power) in particular public servants).
To further clarify and cement the sovereignty of the people (and to better safeguard against abuses of power by any of our public servants), Madison recommended a renovation: "First. That there be prefixed to the constitution a declaration" of three aspects of the sovereignty of the people and the limitations of power of all public servants. Madison implicitly invoked paragraph 2 of the Declaration of Independence and he expressly revealed how our Declaration's principles permeate our Constitution:
"That all power is originally vested in and consequently derived from the people.
That government is instituted, and ought to be exercised for the benefit of the people; which consists in the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the right of acquiring and using property, and generally of pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
That the people have an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform or change their government, whenever it be found adverse or inadequate to the purposes of its institution."
Second, Madison acknowledged that "all power is subject to abuse," and "it is possible the abuse of the powers of the general [federal] government may be guarded against in a more secure manner than is now done." “The people of many states, have thought it necessary to raise barriers against power in all forms and departments of government" and "once bills of rights are established in all the states as well as the federal constitution, we shall find” that “they will have a salutary tendency.”
Crucially, Madison emphasized that “whatever may be [the] form which the several states have adopted in making declarations in favor of particular rights” (and whatever form our Bill of Rights takes) “the great object in view is to limit and qualify the powers of government, by excepting out of the grant of power those cases in which the government ought not to act, or to act only in a particular mode. They point these exceptions sometimes against the abuse of the executive power, sometimes against the legislative,” (sometimes against the judicial branch) “and, in some cases, against the community itself; or, in other words, against the majority [of the people to protect the rights of some] minority.” Madison emphasized that “in a government” such as was constituted by our Constitution, “the great danger lies” in “the abuse of the community” even more “than in the legislative body. The prescriptions in favor of liberty, ought to be levelled against that quarter where the greatest danger lies, namely, that which possesses the highest prerogative of power: But this [is] not found in either the executive or legislative departments of government, but in the body of the people, operating by the majority against the minority.”