A Common Country: Solidarity and the Making of American Democracy

As their democracy faces an array of crises Americans confront a recurring question: whether they really constitute a democratic “people” at all. Reactionaries promote a nostalgic ideal of American nationalism, while implying that many of their compatriots don't belong to their imagined nation. In response, many egalitarians are suspicious of appeals to shared civic belonging—seeing them as outmoded, intolerant, and potentially dangerous. In A Common Country, Nathan Pippenger shows that for...