Deliberativism As the Moral Personality of American Citizens

We live in a crossfire culture where public discourse is riven with persistent, vitriolic strife. Political conflicts rage, tearing apart the fabric of social sympathy and understanding. Partisans of both the right and the left appeal to idiosyncratic convictions about the good society or about the constitutional and political order without adequately explaining why their convictions should prevail. People talk at and past one another—creating a Tower of Babel in the midst of high-tech American chic. This article explores the possibility of creating an antidote to this cultural cacophony by appealing to values underlying American constitutionalism. American democratic constitutionalism implicitly appeals to the ideal of citizens trying to resolve conflict and to measure change together in the American communitarian republic. This citizenship standard is designed to create a common discourse for communicating and justifying public policy—a distinctively democratic political discourse. Admittedly, this standard will not realistically resolve all or even most controversies; but it might illuminate what underlies our deep disagreement in political and cultural controversy and this in turn may encourage reasoned consensus. We might expect this citizenship standard to delineate those moral traits and attitudes necessary for exemplifying the values of American democratic constitutionalism. A morally and politically sensitive interpretation of what it means to be an American citizen can guide our policy choices and, more important, help us to understand our differences. It cannot and should not resolve conflicts permanently. In fact, the citizenship standard is inconsistent with permanent solutions to virtually any problem.

The citizenship standard first asks how Americans should understand and appreciate their constitutional identities. ¹ In other words, which moral traits, if any, are presupposed by American constitutional democracy? We can approach these issues by asking what is it to be an American citizen. ² What kind of character or moral personality best expresses American constitutionalism? By "moral personality" I mean those moral traits and attitudes that are necessary or at least highly desirable for living a morally competent and effective life in a certain type of polity. This line of inquiry is promising if we can determine conceptions of moral personality that support and are supported by different forms of government. The ultimate goal is to discover the type of moral personality most conducive to American constitutional citizenship. The article sketches an argument that the moral personality of American citizenship can be given a unique characterization, and that the good of the American citizen can be defined as a unique conception of the good. ³

In the first section of this essay, I distinguish between two types of moral personality: deliberative and dedicated personalities. I conclude that the best interpretation historically and normatively of American constitutional citizens requires a deliberative personality in one's public life. In the next section, I explain one model for understanding American constitutional history—the American communitarian republic—and describe how deliberativism is an integral element in any plausible conception of American constitutional democracy. ⁴ The following section describes communitarian democracy as a deliberativist expression of the American communitarian republic and its implications for contemporary political debate. I conclude by considering some important objections to communitarian democracy in particular and to deliberativism generally as the moral personality of American constitutional citizenship.

Deliberative and Dedicated Moral Personalities

Whenever attempting to divide political concepts into two mutually exclusive categories, one should proceed with caution. Dichotomies in conceptual analysis, especially in political theory, tend to distort the subtle differences in political attitudes in favor of a one-dimensional framework. At best, such frameworks probably oversimplify and, at worst, distort the landscape. Nevertheless, when two types of category appear to illuminate the domain of politics, avoiding their use prevents a comprehensive appreciation of the structure of political reality. This, in turn, tends to entrench a certain ideological conception of political controversy without identifying it as ideological. Thus, aware of the pitfalls of both embracing and rejecting categorization, I turn to a...