Democratic institutions settle disputes but never forge cohesive national identity

Evidence

It is the loss of confidence in national institutions to mediate ethnic and religious conflicts at the local level that pushes nativism on the national agenda. The events of 9/11—having happened after a contentious presidential race between Al Gore and George W. Bush and, at a time, when America was still grappling with its own role abroad as the world’s sole superpower and its identity as a multicultural society—occurred in just such an era, one of deteriorating faith in America’s democratic institutions of governance. Adherence to democratic institutions, such as constitutions, elections, and courts, helps establish individual rights and settle disputes within society peacefully, but it does not necessarily follow that such adherence builds national unity or confidence. Put differently, democratic processes do not forge a cohesive national identity. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 270

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A sharp normative claim: adherence to democratic procedure protects individual rights yet does not bind a nation together — so national unity rests on something other than democratic process, and its absence is what converts local religious/ethnic friction into national nativist panic.
• SEED: Angle for an essay: if democratic process cannot produce national identity, what does — and is it always exclusion (nativism) that fills the vacuum?
• XREF: connects to: Struggles for political progress are never definitively won. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 536