Democracy Does Not Defend Itself

In a recent reflection on America’s 250th anniversary, I wrote about the country’s historic capacity for renewal.

The United States has never been perfect. It's power never lay in perfection, but in reform. Again and again, America found ways to argue with itself, confront its own hypocrisies, widen the circle of dignity, and keep moving - often slowly and incompletely - towards its own highest ideals. That capacity for self-repair became one of the country’s greatest sources of strength.

A newly released book from the Common Sense Coalition, Betrayed: America Didn’t Vote for This, exposes the fragility behind that strength. What happens when the machinery of renewal and repair is itself being systematically dismantled?

The book is not simply another volume in the already crowded literature on Donald Trump. It is a study in national self-sabotage. In how a country can weaken itself under the banner of strength and turn its back on the principles, institutions, and norms that underpin the American experiment itself.

America did not become the world’s most powerful economy simply because it possessed capital, land, technology, or a powerful military. Other nations have controlled vast territory, abundant resources, powerful armies, and formidable technical skills.

America’s distinctive advantage came from the systems and ideologies that allowed human potential to compound over time: the rule of law, independent courts, world-class universities, scientific ambition, deep capital markets, immigration, open inquiry, institutional restraint, and the ability to attract talent from around the world.

It remained powerful because it held open the possibility of progress. It gave people inside and outside the country reason to believe that democracy could evolve, that diversity could strengthen a nation, that debate could lead to reform, and that freedom under law would unleash human potential at extraordinary scale.

But that possibility is being corroded.

The book documents attacks on judges, universities, scientific institutions, civil servants, alliances, climate policy, and democratic guardrails. But the deeper pattern is more disturbing than any single abuse. It is the normalisation of institutional degradation itself, and the replacement of serious governance with cultural warfare, political retaliation, and performative grievance.

This matters morally, but it also matters economically. Independent courts protect contracts. Leading universities attract talent. Well-funded research institutions push the frontier of knowledge. Sustained immigration draws ambition, invention, and risk-taking from across the world. And checks and balances restrain arbitrary power and give confidence that no leader stands above the law. 

One of the strongest sections of Betrayed focuses on the destruction of American soft power and global alliances. It repeatedly warns that by undermining science, diplomacy, and institutional competence, the United States is actively weakening itself in the defining economic and technological competition of the century.  

The attack on climate policy is particularly shortsighted. The transition to a low-carbon economy represents one of the largest economic transformations in modern history. Clean energy, industrial decarbonisation and climate resilience will shape global competitiveness for decades to come. Yet the book describes a government retreating from scientific and industrial leadership precisely when innovation and investment are needed most.

The costs will not be measured only in emissions. They will show up in weaker industries, slower innovation, higher insurance costs, lost export opportunities, and the suffering of millions of individual Americans.

The silence of many U.S. CEOs on these issues only deepens the risk. As my Net Positive co-author Andrew Winston has argued, what may look prudent for one company becomes corrosive at scale, narrowing the space for others to defend democracy, markets, and the rule of law.

In staying quiet, business leaders also misunderstand their own interests. Markets do not thrive on deregulation and tax cuts alone. They depend on confidence, legitimacy, clear rules, talent, open inquiry, and a shared respect for facts. Strip those foundations away and prosperity becomes more brittle, however strong the stock market may appear in the short term.

The deeper lesson of Betrayed is that democracy does not defend itself. Progress does not protect itself. Institutions do not endure on the memory of past success alone. They survive because leaders choose courage over convenience, citizens choose engagement over despair, and businesses understand that freedom, law, truth and trust are the foundations on which prosperity is built.

The world does not need a perfect America; it never had one. But it urgently needs an America that remembers the ideals that make it great, and one that finds again the courage to live up to them again.

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