A Citizen's Guide to Preserving Democracy

-This democracy has been around for over two centuries for a reason.

But then what?

-It doesn't matter whether or not you're Republican, Democratic, independent, whether you're in the Green Party, you know, it doesn't really matter as long as you're here for America to be better, -[ Chanting ] Not books!

-Democracy doesn't just happen automatically.

It's based upon a whole series of assumptions and norms and practices that is built into making it work.

-The end goal is the same.

We want a fairer society, a more prosperous country.

We want a better place for our children to live a better future.

We want the same things.

-America's never been about what can be done for us.

It's about what can be done by us together.

-There are so many good things happening in our country that are getting very little attention.

And if people only see the worst, then they start to act that way, and we can definitely do better.

-Government isn't where all the power lies.

The power exists with the people.

We need to invest our time and efforts in democracy.

-And the one thing we have in common is our Americanness.

And we've gotta develop that, and we've gotta educate about that.

We've gotta think hard about what makes us American.

-Throughout this country's nearly 250-year history, the essence of democracy has often been challenged.

The debate over what it takes to maintain a government of the people, by the people, and for the people is robust.

Fundamental freedoms, equal rights, free and fair elections are all signs of a healthy democracy, but growing polarization and unprecedented political events are eroding confidence in the well-being of America's democracy.

Still, resilience can prevail.

-If you look at under the Constitution, the executive branch, the judiciary, the Congress, the entire federal system, the states, the cities, and so forth, I think they would deserve to feel pretty good that this experiment -- ha!

-- that they launched has lasted and has succeeded in so many ways.

No one is born in this country, you know, with genes that somehow understand and internalize what a democracy is, why it's valuable, what's expected of them as a citizen.

We've gotta teach it, but we're not teaching it.

We are failing to pass on the culture, the political culture of democracy.

And that, to me, is the real warning.

-Richard Haass is a veteran diplomat, frequent media contributor, and author who recently stepped down after 20 years as president of the Non-Partisan Council on Foreign Relations, where he remains president emeritus.

He's advised both Democrats and Republicans on global issues and foreign policy.

But now Haass is turning his attention to matters more domestic and what he says is one of the greatest threats to this country -- the stability of our democracy.

"The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens" lays out a framework for examining and reintroducing ideals that advanced America's democracy over the past two and a half centuries -- ideals that Haass says, if ignored, could stand in the way of progress.

-I'm worried.

We're off the rails.

Good news is, we can get back on the rails.

There's nothing that's happened that's irrevocable or irreversible, but there is something amiss.

-You really call it a crisis.

Is that the appropriate word?

Are we in that level now?

-We can argue whether it's a crisis or not, but if you're not worried, you're not paying attention.

I don't think any of us has the luxury to be sanguine about the state of, future of American democracy.

And if you value it, as I do, as you do, as I hope everyone watching this does, they should be worried.

And they should basically say, we can no longer assume that after 247, 248 years, it's gonna be around here for another 10, 20, much less 248 years.

-Those who are worried are doing something and are helping others do the same.

From media literacy and being civil to respecting government service and putting country first, everyday Americans from all walks of life are responding to the challenge of preserving democracy.

They're volunteering in their communities, becoming more informed, and working on being more civil and talking with each other.

-...and we approve this message.

-When de Tocqueville wrote "Democracy in America," he traveled around the country, and Americans were meeting with one another.

What impressed him so much is -- the word he used was "associational," I think it was, the idea Americans would associate, they'd meet.

And they would talk things through, and they'd come into the town square, literally, or to a town meeting hall or a church.

And that's where civic interaction took place.

-And it's taking place now in places like Dearborn, Michigan, where two longtime media adversaries learned that through polite and respectful disagreement, there was still room for relationship building and lasting friendship without abandoning their principles.

-Welcome to The Civility Project.

-Stephen Henderson and Nolan Finley started The Civility Project in 2020, hosting dozens of sessions over Zoom.

Now they go on the road teaching others how to do the same.

-People feel badly about politics.

It's not just they feel divided.

They feel mentally strained and exhausted.

-And we resonate to the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who -- and I'll paraphrase -- who said, you know, we hate each other because we fear each other, and we fear each other because we don't understand each other, and we don't understand each other because we don't talk to each other.

And our goal with this Great Lakes Civility Project is to get people to talk to each other.

-Good evening.

[ Cheers and applause ] -Thanks.

Great event on a rainy night, and we appreciate you all coming out to listen to a conversation we've been having now with community groups of all sorts in all different kind of places for three years now.

Steve's a progressive.

I'm a conservative.

People have remarked that, well, you two are friends despite your political differences.

And I was thinking about it as maybe that we're friends because of our political differences, because it's those differences that sort of have forced us to engage and to learn to engage in a productive, civil manner.

-Everything in our culture right now seems to encourage the idea of winning in politics or culture or any of these things that we want to talk about, right?

You've gotta vanquish the other side.

And so Nolan has this great phrase he uses all the time -- conversations aren't competitions.

-We both believe very strongly that our approach to policy making and governing is the right approach.

And yet we have been able over these years of our long friendship, which predates The Civility Project, to have productive discussions.

-You know, when we started The Civility Project, that's where we said we wanted to start the exercise, right?

Getting people together just to talk, talk about who you are and where you're from and how you form the values and opinions that you have.

-And you are?

-Sabrina.

-Sabrina.

And you?

-My name's Noah.

-Noah?

-Noah.

-Noah, okay.

-I was raised in a Catholic household, had five brothers and sisters, went to a parochial school.

-I come from a Muslim household, so most of the values that I learned... -Our motto here at The Great Lakes Civility Project is that, you know, all good people come to their opinions in the same way.

They take the data, the information available and run it through the filters of their own experiences and personal values.

-And I think a way to fix that is just make birth control affordable... -The value is understanding things from a different point of view, maybe learning something that you didn't think of before.

-I just came here... -I don't think we can necessarily even tell that people have changed at the end of it, but you can see the wheels turning for a lot of folks.

-I believe it takes a brave vulnerability to even sit in groups and have these conversations.

-You're gonna be awkward.

And it's okay.

Just don't be afraid to make the attempt.

Don't be afraid to try.

I mean, it's worth the effort to try.

-I'm thinking back to school board meetings in the past, I don't know, two years or so since the pandemic.

-This was the scene at the school board in Loudoun County, Virginia, during a public-comment session on racial and transgender issues.

-This is why we couldn't speak!

-A shouting match over masks, parents on both sides of the mask debate.

-What is taught in a classroom, how children are instructed to be masked or not, have been some of the most contentious debates that people have had in public on camera in front of one another.

When you see those kinds of videos, how do you get people to fulfill that obligation to be civil?

-I want people in those school board meeting or in the city council or in the Congress of the United States to practice these kinds of behaviors, because that's where it counts most.

And that's why I think we have to model it.

People who have responsibilities in terms of authority also have responsibilities to model behaviors.

And they ought to be called out when they don't.

But that's on us.

If an elected representative behaves abominably, why are we then voting for that person?

You know, that old line, "To whom much is given, much is expected"?

-Yeah, -We ought to expect much of those people in our society who we've entrusted with significant authority.

If we don't and they behave badly, that's on us.

-One of the obligations that seems so simple, but I've found is increasingly complicated, is just to be informed -- where information flows, where it comes from, what kind of information somebody gets, whether they're seeing the context, whether they have perspective, whether it's a fact or an opinion.

I mean, there's so many different ways that people are misinformed or intentionally disinformed, that the debate in the country seems like people are just kind of talking past each other.

-Think about it.

We are living at a moment in history when there's more information available to more people on this planet than ever before.

And when information comes at you or me or anybody, it doesn't have a little yellow stickum, a Post-it note saying, "Oh, by the way, this is trusted."

"Oh, by the way, you can safely ignore this."

Information doesn't come tagged, and there's many more sources of it, many of which are not edited, many of which the quote-unquote "facts" aren't facts.

We also don't teach it nearly enough in our schools.

It's interesting -- in places like Finland now, and it's coming to New Jersey, this idea of information literacy to help people understand, what's a fact?

How do I know a fact from, say, an opinion?

Because these things aren't self-evident.

-New Jersey will now require public schools to teach media literacy in an effort... -Training students to identify fact from fiction.

Delaware State Senator... -California classrooms will soon be getting a new course subject -- media literacy... -At least a dozen states have enacted bipartisan media-literacy standards, lessons that help people understand how to tell fact from fiction, what's a trusted source, and what's good information.

Information-literacy classes are not yet a staple of American education, but that isn't discouraging people from doing something about it.

In Florida, Bella Otte is tackling digital-media literacy with her peers.

The high schooler is part of MediaWise, a national Teen Fact-Checking Network run by the Poynter Institute.

-I'm Bella Otte, and I'm a senior at Academy of Holy Names.

I am a filmmaker.

I am a fact-checker.

I am a student and a happy one, I guess.

I think everyone's entitled to have their own opinion, but it's important that it has information backing it.

-The Satanic Temple is an organization that aims to establish after-school clubs... -Breaking news -- those paper straws that Starbucks and everybody else told us... -I think that social media allows for people to have voices who wouldn't have it in the first place.

And that's a beautiful feature of it.

But I think it also allows for misinformation to spread.

And that's -- it doesn't take away the pros of social media.

It just gives us something that we have to be cautious of.

-Young people -- they're not going to to newspapers to get the news.

Young people spend a lot of time watching influencers or celebrities, YouTubers, people who are not experts in their fields but are able to speak with emotional language that is many times filled with falsehoods and misleading narratives.

-So what we wanted to do today was just, first, I think, just if anyone has a pitch they wanna talk about.

-So what we did is create this digital newsroom of teens who were finding potential misleading posts on Instagram or Snapchat, where they exist online.

-Hi, everybody.

It's Loren.

And welcome back to "Is This Legit?"

-So the show's called "Is This Legit?"

And when I first saw it, I thought it was kind of a funny title, but it's grown on me.

I love it.

[ Laughs ] I think that the title's reflective of our purpose, which is to try and remain appealing to younger audiences.

It's important that we have resources where students can feel like they're being talked to rather than lectured to.

-It was really scary when Buffalo Bill safety Damar Hamlin collapsed in the middle of an NFL game.

Thankfully, doctors say he's doing well and hanging with his friends and teammates.

But that hasn't stopped a lot of people from pushing theories about what caused this unexpected condition.

-So each of the fact-checkers, they find their own claims on TikTok or X, formerly Twitter, or sketchy news sites they might come across.

-They burned vinyl chloride.

And when you do that, it releases... -And then they come to us, and we evaluate the claim, make sure it's fact-checkable.

Then they take it from there.

-This TikToker, Kate the Chemist, claims there's acid rain in Ohio, but is this true?

-A lot of the videos that we create with the Teen Fact-Checking Network are based around three questions that were developed by the Stanford History Education Group when someone sees something potentially misleading online.

First, let's see who's behind this information.

Who's behind the information?

What's the evidence?

Keep an eye out for links, articles, studies, literally anything that backs up and supports their claim.

And what do other sources say?

-According To the Pew Research Center, guns are responsible for a large portion of children's death.

-And while fact-checking this information, they are teaching other teens how to do it themselves.

-Here's a quick tip -- do some lateral reading.

That means leaving the site... -We're trying to teach you what we've learned.

The tweet doesn't provide any sources at all, which is a red flag.

You don't have to be, like, the smartest person in the room, or you don't have to be the most experienced person in the room to be able to fact-check.

-This is a group of incredibly precocious young people who joined MediaWise because they were passionate about fighting misinformation.

-Now to our rating.

This tweet is not legit.

-Therefore, we rate this claim as mostly legit.

-So we rate Ramaswamy's comments as needs context.

-I get really energized when I see what the Teen Fact-Checking Network is into, because it gives me hope about the future and about, you know, how invested young people are in what's happening in this country.

-I think that misinformation could be the downfall of the country.

By not being able to trust one another, we're incapable of hearing each other out.

We're incapable of learning from one another and hearing from different perspectives.

And that's what this country was built off of.

I think that MediaWise provides me with a national platform.

It's a great way to give back, and it's also an empowering way to feel like I'm doing something that, you know, there's not a lot of opportunities for teenagers to be able to make a big impact.

-Here in the Senate, only we can decide what our new normal is, and we ought to get to know one another.

We don't know one another.

We don't have to let circumstances dictate our future.

Let us once again become a body of respect, humility, cooperation, achievement, and, yes, friendship.

That can and should be our new normal.

-You write about valuing norms, and I wonder how we should be striking a balance.

One of our norms, for example, is this peaceful transfer of power.

-So help me, God.

[ Cheers and applause ] -It's literally an image that I remember seeing.

Wow.

This president just handed over control to the next one.

And they're actually walking hand in hand, literally handing over the keys and inviting them in.

And then there have been other norms that we, as a society, challenged.

Why shouldn't women have the right to vote?

Why shouldn't people of color have the right to vote?

And that's really through challenge of those norms that we became a better society.

So how do you figure out which norms to value, which norms to challenge?

-Often situations begin as norms because some individual or group of individuals say, "This is a value."

When the United States was created as a country -- first president, obviously, George Washington -- there was no restriction that he could only serve two terms.

Washington thought it was important to establish the norm that presidents only serve two terms.

He stepped down even though people wanted him to stay.

He didn't want to create, if you will, the King of America.

FDR then served nearly four terms, was elected four times, because in some ways of the Depression and World War II.

But afterwards, we said, those were special circumstances, but we cannot ever allow that to happen again.

And we passed an amendment to the Constitution limiting to two terms.

Basically, the norm wasn't strong enough.

We have the norm of the peaceful transfer of power.

We didn't live up to it in 2020.

We saw it with January 6th.

We saw it with the refusal to concede, to accept the electoral results.

You can't write that into law.

That's something we can and should expect of our political leaders.

So I think norms are great when they make sense and we can get people to voluntarily live up to them.

When they won't, we've gotta ask ourselves, should we change the law?

You also raise the totally legitimate thing is, what happens when values change or thinking change?

Say, about gay rights and so forth, gay marriage.

As a society, we've been willing to say, look, this was a norm in one era about marriage.

Now we're gonna have a different one.

And if we have to formalize things in laws and so forth, we'll do it.

Societies, again -- democratic societies have the structural advantage of change.

That's how democracies ought to operate.

No one ever thought the rules and the norms and the -- that were established two and a half centuries ago were gonna be all we would need for time immemorial.

The challenge with a democracy, though -- almost any institution -- is, how do you balance innovation and preservation?

-Yeah.

-What about our political DNA do we want to preserve and protect?

And where do we have to adapt and change?

But one thing is, rather than giving up on it, how do we improve it?

It ain't gonna get better by itself.

So I would say if you see areas of American society that are flawed, you see aspects of our economy or government that are flawed, you can't then sit back, or you shouldn't sit back and assume it's gonna sort itself out.

Get involved.

-One modern model for getting communities more involved -- a process called participatory budgeting.

It encourages voter involvement by allowing community members to cast their vote on how to spend part of a public budget.

The hope is that early engagement will yield long-term commitments towards self-governance and participating in all elections.

Residents in Evanston, Illinois, gave it a try, deciding how to spend $3 million of the city's American Rescue Plan Act money.

-My name is Matt Ourne.

I'm the participatory budgeting manager for the City of Evanston.

Hey, Shelly.

Hey, Kimon.

It's okay.

Perfect timing.

We're right down the hall in Bobby's room.

Let me come with.

And today is Second Project Expo for the participatory budgeting process.

What's gonna happen today is several of the budget delegates who developed proposals -- they spent seven months with us working hard to make a huge list of ideas into a list of 20 proposals for the community to vote on.

So this is their opportunity to meet with community members, tell them about their proposals, and an opportunity for community members to learn more and vote.

Hey, Renee, welcome in.

We had over 300 people come to our events when we were collecting ideas.

We collected over 1,300 ideas for how this money should be spent.

-Very first time that the City of Evanston is doing it.

I believe that every single demographic that is represented in the City of Evanston are represented today.

And everyone is vying for a part of that $3 million.

-Roughly half of the people who have been engaging with us have not participated in a city meeting before or talked to a public official before.

So these are really people that aren't -- haven't engaged before with the city that are engaging now, which is really exciting.

-So our vision was... -It's a really great initiative for ideas and initiative that would normally not be funded.

It's really giving power back to the community.

And I think that's amazing.

-When I started doing this, we didn't really know what was gonna happen, right?

Doing a participatory budgeting process -- if people don't come and people don't help us, it doesn't work.

People showed up consistently.

Most of the folks here came to seven meetings over the course of seven months.

They had additional meetings with city staff to help develop their proposals into something that can be implemented.

I think in a democracy, it doesn't work without people.

And this is a microcosm of that.

[ Indistinct conversation ] -I guess it makes me wanna participate a little more because I feel like this might actually make a difference in the Evanston community.

-I think this is real democracy.

I think this is democracy at its finest.

-Everyone say "participatory budgeting."

All right, we got it.

-Thank you.

[ Cheers and applause ] -There's a project in Illinois -- participatory budgeting, where people get to decide on how to spend some portion of government funds.

What do you think the impacts are?

-I like when people do these projects.

They come away from them with a better appreciation that, gee, politics can be hard, but also politics can be interesting.

And I can often, by participating, get a little bit more than I can as a bystander.

You know, democracy is not a spectator sport.

Democracy requires people to suit up and get on the field.

The most important thing is to be a voter, to be an informed voter.

This country was founded on people fighting for the right to vote and govern ourselves.

I continue to be stunned when so many Americans who have that right don't exercise it.

The stakes are enormous in these elections.

The differences are real.

The consequences will affect their lives.

So I want Americans to get informed and then to to vote.

-Across the ages, there have been many examples of compromise.

The great compromise of 1787 during the Constitutional Convention set up the two houses of Congress and established the Electoral College.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act was debated furiously before a compromise bill passed the Senate.

-The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is signed at the White House by President Johnson.

-The 1983 Social Security Act, finalized through a quiet agreement between House Speaker Tip O'Neill and President Ronald Reagan... -This is indeed a happy day.

-...well-known political adversaries.

-None of us here today would pretend that this bill is perfect.

Each of us had to compromise one way or another, but the essence of bipartisanship is to give up a little in order to get a lot.

-After compromising on some gun restrictions, Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut was able to pass legislation that went into effect in 2023.

-We are very proud to have an agreement between 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats in the Senate to pass the most significant piece of anti-gun-violence legislation in nearly 30 years.

-There's several arguments for being open to compromise.

One is it's just possible -- it's good you're sitting down -- that the person on the other side may have a point.

You may actually learn something.

You may actually change a little bit.

I love the relationship between Justice Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg when they were on the court.

One was a conservative, one was a liberal or progressive, and they found that their interactions actually strengthened their own thinking, strengthened their own writing when it came to opinions.

I love that as an example.

So often people have to be willing, and Ronald Reagan was really good about this.

He used to stand up and say, "Hey, take half a loaf.

That's today.

Maybe next year I can get another slice of the loaf and work at that."

Again, I understand it's hard.

Often you're rewarded for refusal to compromise, but refusing to compromise often means you don't get anything done.

And you've gotta ask yourselves, is that really the best of all the available options?

Often not.

And I think for politicians, if they do compromise -- and I learned this from working for 41, George Herbert Walker Bush -- it's not enough to do the right thing.

I think when political leaders compromise, they've gotta stand up and explain why they did it.

-And let's ensure that America stands before the world united, strong, at peace, and fiscally sound.

But of course, things may be difficult.

We need compromise.

We've had dissension.

We need harmony.

We've had a chorus of discordant voices.

-Here were the options I was faced, and I know some of you aren't gonna be happy with me for compromising, but here is why I did it.

Here is why I think we are better off, despite all the imperfections or limits or flaws of what was agreed to.

So the more you compromise, the more you have to explain and educate.

-If we want to have a democratic society, we can't not teach our kids about how it works.

We left off with the 13th, 14th, and 15th, the Reconstruction Amendments.

This is my 21st year teaching.

I've taught just about every social studies class you could imagine.

Congress changed dramatically its composition in the first two election cycles after the 15th Amendment was passed.

20% of the members were African American.

And then the Southern states were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we gotta figure out what to do.

Government is, by far, my favorite class to teach.

Of all the classes, I think it's the most practically important class.

Very problematic and had a huge shaping impact on society then and for generations afterwards.

And you could probably say it still has an impact on us today.

The simplest thing that I hope for is that when they leave here next year, they go and vote.

Beyond that, you know, I really hope that they understand the general process, and I hope that they are able to realize that the voting that they do, that the people who they elect are writing legislation that is gonna shape their lives and their children's lives.

And that's the future of the United States.

Why hasn't it been added?

-The Founding Fathers believe that without education, there could not be successful democracy.

Up until the 1960s, American high schools required up to three courses in government and civics.

-I'm so glad I'm an American.

-But in the last half century, civics education has eroded.

A 2022 civics assessment known as the Nation's Report Card showed a dip in civics and history scores among eighth graders over a four-year period.

It was the lowest recorded score since 1998.

-We are failing ourselves by not teaching and requiring civics in our schools and in our colleges and universities.

That is fixable.

That is correctable.

We have the ability to do it.

There's no excuse not to do it.

-Something has happened over the past 30 or 40 years to diminish the importance of education in our system, our government, our values.

I remember taking a course in high school called Problems of Democracy.

I wonder if that even exists anymore.

-In September, independent Senator Angus King of Maine and Republican James Lankford of Oklahoma introduced a bill to strengthen civics education nationally.

-I don't think people are coming up generation by generation who have that kind of gut-level understanding of our constitutional system.

And it leads to the problems of a declining support for democracy, declining support for elections.

Elections are the most fundamental check and balance in the Constitution -- regular elections.

And if you have a lot of people that don't have that sort of basic feeling about elections and about the Constitution and how the system's supposed to work -- and it's supposed to be cumbersome and difficult.

I think the framers succeeded beyond their wildest dreams sometimes.

But it's really important to have a civic education.

-So we've got Angus King from Maine, I think James Lankford from Oklahoma, trying to put out a civics-education legislation.

Think that'll work?

-I think civics-education legislation is a start.

If you were a parent and you had a child going to school -- whether it's middle school, high school, college -- you would say to the school, the school authorities, "You are responsible for making sure my son or daughter can read, can write, can do basic math, can think critically, can use computers in this age of technology."

Why is it any less important that these schools don't prepare them to be citizens in this democracy?

Isn't that the obligation of the schools?

So I would love to see that mandated at schools, at every level.

I think they ought to understand, what is a democracy.

I think students ought to learn the value of democracies, the strengths and the weaknesses, the kind of thing we're talking about.

Students ought to understand the rights, but also the obligations of citizens.

-And while there are efforts to bolster knowledge of how government works inside classrooms, other organizations are working to pick up the slack in other ways.

The nonprofit organization DoSomething is encouraging young Americans, through the lens of civics and democracy, to impact their communities and their future.

[ Cheers and applause ] -When you guys think of the word "democracy," what do you think of?

-Voting.

-Voting.

-For the people.

-For the people.

-You hear the term "democracy" and it feels like, what does that actually mean?

And does that relate to me?

-Unity.

-Empowerment.

-Empowerment.

-The right to live.

-The right to live.

Okay.

Are you a poet?

[ Laughter ] -But what we know to be true is young people are incredibly passionate about what's happening to themselves and what's happening in their communities.

-Like, things like housing security or like... -And yet, if we don't help them understand, or as I like to say, demystify democracy for young people, respectfully, they're never gonna get the change they seek.

-The questions in front of you are the questions that we've been asking young people around New York City about, you know, what they wanna see change in New York, what they love about their community.

When I describe DoSomething, I say that we're essentially supporting young people in doing something in their communities around issues that they're passionate about.

-How would you say, if you had the power to change that, what would you do?

-So we are all about trying to give them the tools, the knowledge, and the skills to be able to do that more effectively.

-Maybe I would go towards, um, trying to add it to a ballot measure.

-And so through DoSomething's platform, young people come and they get engaged on the causes they care about, and we get them to take action, not just, like, wagging their finger and complaining, but actually saying, oh, if there is someone in my community who needs books or someone in my community who needs food, then I can really be a part of that solution, right?

So it's getting the young person to go from caring about cause to taking action.

-From all these events.

we will have talked to like almost 1,000 young people.

-Who's here that care about their community?

-We feel like the more that they can find their own voice and see their role in democracy and take leadership and take action, the more that they will feel a part of it and more likely to be actively engaged.

-And most importantly, we wanna make this place better!

Yeah!

That's what I'm talking about.

Better starts with us.

-The whole concept of being a brother's keeper or a sister's keeper -- we have obligations to one another in this society, and if people do not succeed in this society, that's gonna have implications for us.

So even if it's -- even if you're not motivated by a concern for your fellow human being, you should be motivated by self-interest.

-In 1980, tragedy motivated Candy Lightner to push for tougher penalties for drunk driving after her 13-year-old daughter was killed by a drunk driver.

She formed the grassroots organization MADD, or Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which grew to more than 400 chapters around the world, passing drunk-driving legislation both at state levels and nationally.

MADD's lobbying efforts helped raise the legal drinking age to 21.

-I love Mothers Against Drunk Driving for several reasons.

One, as you say, it's a great way of promoting the common good.

It's a way that you don't drive drunk.

It helps you.

But at least as important, if not more important, it protects other people.

So that gets to the core of the common-good idea.

-Food pantries, public parks, mass transit are also examples of the common good.

So are libraries.

By the 1800s, free public libraries were commonplace.

Over the centuries, they've evolved by providing additional resources for the public, well beyond books.

In 2023, New York's Brooklyn Public Library celebrated its 125th anniversary, drawing thousands of new members to its libraries by showcasing a cultural icon.

-Libraries have always been part of the common good.

We're one of the most democratic institutions around.

We here at Brooklyn welcome millions of visitors a year to our thousands of programs.

And the real connection we make is what does the community need?

And that's why we wanna do this work.

[ Jay-Z song plays ] -I came here today to come specifically to -- for the exhibit -- the Jay-Z exhibit.

I have been a big fan and am really excited that this exhibit is here in Brooklyn.

-There are 13 limited-edition Jay-Z library cards, one for each album that he created.

-I didn't know there was a special card, so it's a nice added bonus.

I also got the inside scoop that if I go to different library locations, I can possibly get the other cards.

So I am -- I think I'm gonna take part in that.

-I'm so excited to get it because I heard it's a limited card.

-[ Rapping ] Slammin' Bentley doors like we invented doors -Jay was given his library card as a young kid in school and told about the library.

And obviously, he's a writer, right?

I mean, Jay's the first rapper to ever be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

So there's a lot of synergy between him and the library.

- Flying paper planes through the projects Now the whole projects on my jet -Jay-Z's a Brooklyn guy.

For us, it was a natural connection.

And Jay-Z is such a wordsmith.

We are up to about 55,000 card signups, and about 33,000 of those are brand-new users, people who had never had a BPL card before.

So we're actively engaging those folks to say, you know, you got this great library card, but don't forget about all the amazing services you now have available at your fingertips with that.

This is for the people, right?

It's a public place.

The common good of being able to reach people, the common good of being able to reintroduce the library to people who potentially may have thought that it wasn't for them.

-I hope that this exhibit has shown people that we're welcoming and we want you to be here and you belong here.

-Political violence has been part of America's history -- presidential assassinations, Jim Crow violence, bombings by activist groups.

Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. influenced the growth of peaceful protest and nonviolent resistance during the Civil Rights Movement.

We've had very good historical examples where nonviolence has worked.

Obviously, I'm thinking from Gandhi to MLK Jr.

But right now, I don't know if it's the distance between those historical events and today, a different set of conditions on the ground, but people are much more open to the idea of fighting fire with fire and saying, "This is how the other side wants to play it?

Fine.

than we need to do this, too."

What's the problem with that?

-Because if fire leads to more fire, we're all gonna be caught up in the burning building, and the building's gonna be this country.

The introduction of force is just gonna invite or trigger the use of force against it.

It's almost like Newton -- for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.

If people introduce force and violence into the political space, it's gonna be met with force and violence.

-If, as Haass says, fire leads to more fire, the events of January 6th would be the kindling.

Politically motivated violence is on the rise, from Senate hearings in Congress... -Sir, this is the time, this is the place.

If you wanna run your mouth, we can be two consenting adults.

We can finish it here.

-Okay, that's fine.

Perfect.

-You wanna do it now?

-I'd love to do it right now.

-Well, stand your butt up, then.

-You stand your up butt up.

-Oh, hold it.

-Oh, stop it.

-Is that your solution?

-...to city council meetings... [ Indistinct shouting ] ...and threats against politicians and their families.

-We're just learning about a home invasion at Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco residence.

-Resisting violence has become a formidable challenge.

-The challenge is to make this experiment work with both things we need to do, but also things we need to avoid.

And one of the things we need to avoid is political violence becoming more commonplace.

There'll be no winners if that were to happen.

So we've gotta have political leaders essentially delegitimizing it, religious leaders delegitimize it, teachers not only delegitimizing it, but imparting the skills so young people learn how to disagree without the violent -- without the disagreement spilling over into violence.

-You say that one of the obligations is to respect government service.

And for a lot of people at the ends of the political spectrum right now, they would just say, "I don't respect this government enough."

-Government's not a choice.

Government's out there.

We've got tens of millions of people at the federal level, the state level, the county level, the city level.

So government's a fixture of life.

I love the idea that talented people have a stint in government.

We have an all-volunteer military.

I think that's fantastic.

-Active service members, National Guardsmen, veterans, and reservists -- more than 1.3 million Americans are members of the United States military, but government service goes beyond the armed forces.

Federal, state, and city jobs are accessible to everyone.

They include public-service jobs like the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps, now in its 30th year.

One program, Lead for America, gives members the chance to serve in communities they call home.

-I'd love to see more talented people do public service.

California has recently introduced public-service options for young people, and you go serve the community or the state.

It's a great educational opportunity for them.

It's a great opportunity to improve the society.

-In both big cities and rural towns, young people are taking the lead in returning home to serve their communities.

-Why do I do this?

-For one young Iowan, it's also an opportunity to both serve and to bring an awareness of his culture to others.

-I wanted today, through the beautiful power of digital media... [ Snapping fingers ] ...to bring the Sikh community from Des Moines to you.

My name is JJ.

I am an Iowan, I'm a Sikh American, and I am an American Connection Corps member.

-This Is a bracelet that represents Sikhism and my culture.

-So today I was able to bring digital stories from the Sikh community in West Des Moines, to West Branch, which is a rural community.

I remember reading something about Lead for America.

And the whole shtick was, we will fund your work if you come back to your hometown.

And I was like, what?

That's amazing!

Now as an American Connection Corps member, I'm dedicated to using digital medium to tell stories.

-Hi.

My name is Abe Polstein, and I'm an open book.

-I think what's beautiful about digital storytelling is it's inclusive, it's accessible, it's sustainable.

-My family and I have fled the war-torn country of Bosnia.

-In some ways, it allows folks to be in the same room who might not always have that opportunity.

-But, you know, the end of the journey, we found freedom.

-And that's what I love about the service I'm involved in.

Its connection.

And when you can connect people together, it takes on a -- that connection takes on a life of its own.

-...my culture.

-Oh, yeah.

That's wonder... -We're seeing a lot of acknowledgement on the importance of service and the role that service can play in building the country we want to see.

-I'm committed to Iowa because it's home, and I wanna leave this home a little better than when I arrived.

-You know, throughout this book, you're asking people to put the country first.

Sounds simple, but define it.

-Can I just confess I find it depressing that I even had to mention it?

I would've thought it was pretty self-evident.

But when I get up in the morning and I turn on television or I read the newspapers, I see glaring examples where people in our public life are not putting the country before party or person.

And a lot of them know better.

-Right now, there are gonna be people who would say that January 6th was, in their opinion, putting the country first, right?

That they feel so strongly about their vision of what this country is that they needed to do that.

-I've heard that from several people.

Those who went into the Capitol on January 6th -- they all thought they were patriots.

-Right.

-What I fall back on when I hear that is a quote of Ronald Reagan.

So it was in his farewell address, and he said, "Patriotism is good," and he applauds it.

And then Reagan says, "But patriotism in and of itself is not enough."

What Ronald Reagan then went on to say is we need informed patriotism.

And the problem with the people on January 6th is what they were doing was not in the traditions of this country.

That's not how we promote or pursue our political ends in this country.

Informed patriotism say there's a way to go about promoting or advancing your political agenda.

It doesn't involve violence.

It doesn't involve attacking police officers.

It doesn't involve invading the space of Congress.

There's legitimate, lawful ways of advancing your political agenda, and that's what American politics are all about.

-Utah Republican Governor Spencer Cox is working to put country before partisan politics.

A chairman of the National Governors Association, he's launched the Disagree Better campaign to encourage fellow governors to disagree in ways that find solutions and solve problems.

-So there's lots of metrics that we're looking at.

-He first found success with this concept in 2020 when he and his political opponent, Democrat Chris Peterson, appeared in a campaign ad called One Nation, which highlighted their shared values and put partisanship aside ahead of their election.

-I'm Spencer Cox, your Republican candidate for Utah governor.

-And I'm Chris Peterson, your Democratic candidate for governor.

-I've been concerned about toxic polarization in our country for a long time.

In 2020, I was running for governor at the same time that Trump and Biden were running against each other for president.

And I was very concerned.

My friend said, "Well, why don't you do something about it?"

So I thought about it all weekend and had this crazy idea to reach out to my opponent, the Democrat, who I was running against, and say, you know, "Why don't we film an ad together?"

We are currently in the final days of campaigning against each other.

-But our common values transcend our political differences.

And the strength of our nation rests on our ability to see that.

-We are both committed to American civility and a peaceful transition of power.

-And we hope Utah will be an example to the nation.

-Because that is what our country is built on.

The ad -- it went viral in 2020 in ways we didn't expect.

We've asked some fellow governors if they would be willing to do this.

The response has been very positive.

-We're Committed to disagreeing better.

-Like in 2019, when we came together to end the Kansas City economic border war.

-Be curious, ask questions.

If you still disagree, that's okay, but you might find that you aren't as far apart as you think.

-It's not about showing the other side how wrong they are.

It's about what's best for America.

-You may be a Democrat.

I may be a Republican.

But we're both Americans.

That's our common identity.

And if we put country first over party, that allows us now a framework to start to work together to solve problems.

My name's Spencer Cox.

-And I'm Chris Peterson.

-And we approve this message.

-There are so many good things happening in our country that are getting very little attention.

And if people only see the worst, then they start to act that way, and we can definitely do better.

-Yeah.

American democracy is not gonna be protected or preserved or saved by some individual coming on the political scene who's gonna wave a magic wand and somehow say, "Okay," say and do things and then American democracy will be fine for another 250 years.

It doesn't work that way.

It's going to work.

It's gonna be protected and preserved and saved because hundreds of millions of Americans are gonna do the right thing.

-Yeah.

-They're going to push back against violence.

They're gonna get involved.

They're gonna get informed.

They're gonna look out for the common good.

They're gonna ask that civics be taught in our schools.

They're gonna support programs of public service.

And that's the way this democracy has evolved over the centuries.

And that's the way it's gonna last and do well for centuries to come.

-Through democracy, everybody can -- ideally, everybody can be involved.

-Young people are entering office.

Young people are being elected.

Things are changing.

-I'm definitely gonna speak to my parents and my family about, you know, voting and the importance of it because it's important that, you know, our voices are heard, too.

-Even though that our main goal is not the same, our purpose is the same.

We all want the same thing.

We all want to live better.

We all want to feel better.

We all want for people around us to be healthy, be thriving, to live.

-It's not just our elected officials that help run this country.

It's the people that are walking the streets every day.

It's you.

It is me.

-Democracy was meant to be adaptive, but it was also, as I like to say, meant to be a full-contact sport.

And we need everybody playing in democracy, participating and making their voice heard, in order to make it our own.

-As history shows us, democracy is not easy.

It takes sustained work.

The good news -- there are signs from every corner of each state that Americans care about democracy and are finding ways to help preserve it.

I'm Hari Sreenivasan, and this has been "A Citizen's Guide to Preserving Democracy."