Democracy
Learning from the upheaval of the nineteen-thirties.

In the thirties, community leaders across the country ignited debate on the meaning and the future of democracy, inviting Americans to assemble in the same room and argue with one another—to stretch their civic muscles.Courtesy Library of Congress
 

"In the nineteen-thirties, you could count on the Yankees winning the World Series, dust storms plaguing the prairies, evangelicals preaching on the radio, Franklin Delano Roosevelt residing in the White House, people lining up for blocks to get scraps of food, and democracies dying, from the Andes to the Urals and the Alps."

"American democracy, too, staggered, weakened by corruption, monopoly, apathy, inequality, political violence, hucksterism, racial injustice, unemployment, even starvation. 'We do not distrust the future of essential democracy,' F.D.R. said in his first Inaugural Address, telling Americans that the only thing they had to fear was fear itself. But there was more to be afraid of, including Americans’ own declining faith in self-government. ... Some Americans turned to Communism. Some turned to Fascism. And a lot of people, worried about whether American democracy could survive past the end of the decade, strove to save it.

“'It’s not too late,' Jimmy Stewart pleaded with Congress, rasping, exhausted, in 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,' in 1939. 'Great principles don’t get lost once they come to light.' It wasn’t too late. It’s still not too late."

Article: The Last Time Democracy Almost Died