If the current government is not good, what would be good? To make good decisions into the future this Project offers we need a new articulation of the virtues that would constitute the covenant of the Next Democracy for the 21st Century. Our current leaders suggest that virtue is a ‘losers’ game fit only for the proletariate middle classes and that money and wealth are the ‘winners’ markers. The history of democracy predicts this degradation, and democracies are a history of evolving as well as deteriorating virtue. Perhaps virtue as a moral bannister must evolve with the times in a democracy because if not, the politics devolve into another Coliseum game. So what follows is a draft of contemporary virtues that if subscribed to by the majority could guide our “discipline of democracy”. Had a majority of us vowed and held to these virtues I would guess the government would look wholly different. I find it hard to believe that if asked to truly deliberate we couldn’t still get a majority of Americans to support these virtues. A final version of this will appear on the website at the end of next week as a one click opportunity to vote for the ‘The Next Democracy’. 

The Next Democracy

A democracy is a form of government devised to articulate and elevate the collective authority of the people into an evolving form of law and order that serves the inevitable plurality of the people. Democracy is a practice, a singular skill, and a set of core virtues that work together form a government devoted to the public service to and for all citizens. The responsibility of every citizen in the democracy is to develop their knowledge, skill, and democratic morality to contribute to the overall good of the society.  The virtues of democracy exist to accommodate the individual, personal and or religious requirements of the citizen and therefore the first commitment is to allow every individual to freely practice their beliefs and religion to the extent their practice does not violate the these core democratic virtues.

The New Democracy’s Citizen Vow

 Seven Virtues of the New Democracy

  I vow to support these democrat citizen virtues:

1. Speaking Truth. 
2. Building toward the ‘Shared Public Reality’.
3. Freedom of Expression 
4. Respect and Reverence for Life and the Living
5. Primacy of priorities for the future generations and the Earth’s care
6. Exercise my vote as the first element of citizen entitlement, responsibility, power, and expression.
7. The care and preservation of every citizen’s and visitor’s personal dignity. 

Good for this Project is the future world the practice of these virtues in a free democracy would create. 

thegooddecision.org