The severity of the threats facing American democracy often makes it difficult to look past short-term challenges. But our current democratic crisis, including both the rise of right-wing populism and growing illiberalism on parts of the left, was shaped by political, legal, and cultural ideas developed over many decades—and, some would argue, was aided by an intellectual staleness within the project of liberal democracy itself. Indeed, it is the creation, debate, and evolution of ideas that helps societies and political systems advance, and renewing American democracy will similarly require investing in the development of new ideas to create the political environments of the future: new policy proposals, new legal doctrines, new foreign policy frameworks, and new principles and defenses of liberal democracy.
Please join Shikha Dalmia, Visiting Fellow at the Mercatus Center’s Program on Pluralism and Civil Exchange; Francis Fukuyama, Chairman of the Editorial Board of American Purpose; and Yascha Mounk, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Persuasion, for a strategic discussion about the intellectual battle for American democracy and why it matters—even in the here and now.