TWO AMERICAS

The insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, designed to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election,1 was a jarring reminder that the United States of America has always been a fragile proposition, one that demands constant attention and care. The tendency to abbreviate the nation’s name, to speak and write and eventually to think only of “America,” can induce forgetfulness: division is in our bones. As the flag partially represents, we are a federal republic, made up of several States and the quasi-sovereign Indian Nations, all of which have marked physical and legal borders. We are a liberal democracy, founded on the premise that there would be religious and political pluralism, and on the embrace of private property and free market principles. It is often said that liberal democracy is messy business, but it has become especially so as the nature and extent of our heterogeneity has exploded in the last century; like “good trouble” is still trouble, good pluralism is still inherently fractious.2 Finally, regardless of our sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin, we are all burdened by the exclusionary legal legacy left by the founders: white not also black, fathers not also mothers, citizens not also immigrants. As many others have written in some form over the last year, it is a mistake to assume that we know the ties that bind us and that they will obviously hold. These admonitions are not new, of course. To talk about multiple Americas is to take part in the perennial critique of two closely-related claims: The first is that despite our federalism, our liberalism, and the legacy of exclusion, all of which built in division, our political community is, as Barack Obama insisted, not “red states or blue states, just the United States,”3 or, as the Pledge of Allegiance details, we are “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”4 The second is that this particular collection of values and commitments— under God, liberty, and justice for all—generally describes a shared idea, one that defines our country specifically. Others may also hold one or more of these values and commitments, but America does so exceptionally. Not only do we respect the free exercise of religion and cultivate liberty, justice, and equality separately; but also, among political systems, we do the combination uniquely well. Barack Obama’s words and the Pledge’s refrain might sound like political pablum to lazy ears