Democracy is questionable. Ambitious dictators undermine their authority by accusing their opponents of doing the same. Should we respond in kind? The temptation is real. But confronting illiberalism with illiberalism will not save the house. That becomes fire.
Liberal principles have been pushed to extremes by both the right and the left. The first victory of the antiliberal impulse is to make the measure seem necessary.
The real risk to American democracy is not just anti-democratic behavior, but the excuses people make when their side benefits. Political violence becomes acceptable, institutions become obstacles, and democracy itself becomes disposable. Undermining the system is no longer a scandal. It’s a strategy.
One response is to play what writing teacher and theorist Peter Elbow calls “the believing game.” Its discipline is strict. You cannot reject a belief until you succeed in believing it. If you simply listen politely or restate the view before saying it is wrong, you have not refuted the view. You may have missed it.
Democracy cannot be built on information alone. It takes patience to keep asking questions before you treat them as problems. Disciplined acts of faith can reveal what certainty hides. Philosopher Michael Polanyi provided a philosophical framework for this discipline. “We often have to trust before we fully understand.”
A more modest version is the “5-minute rule.” Take five minutes to think internally about the views you don’t hold. The White Queen’s claim that she believes in “six impossible things before breakfast” is funny because it’s ridiculous. There isn’t much discipline required here. Try one difficult thing for 5 minutes.
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What is interesting or useful about this view? What is it that others are missing?
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What would I notice if I believed this view? What would happen if it were true?
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In what sense or under what conditions is this idea true?
Those who cannot answer such questions have no right to dismiss their views. You probably won’t end up believing most of the opinions you answer “yes” to, but you may experience a cognitive shift, an expansion of perspective, that can never be achieved through careful understanding. Good citizens will have their hearts broken many times.
Nowadays, it is common to criticize either/or thinking. In many cases, the complaints are justified. Polarization makes any difference feel like a nervous breakdown. F. Scott Fitzgerald expressed it more sharply. crack up: “The test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in the mind at the same time and still maintain the ability to function.” He saw the alternative as stagnation or collapse.
“Everything about me is a contradiction, and so is everyone else. We are made of opposition. We live between two poles. There is a profane and an aesthete and a murderer and a saint in all of us. You do not reconcile the poles; you only recognize them.” Orson Welles said. This recognition does not mean giving up. That’s the beginning of sanity.
In order for differences to be meaningful, we need to be different from each other. Settlement can be the bane of dispute resolution. They are not separate but equal, rather clear enough to meet as equals. Black power was what was needed to fix integration. Solidarity means alliance, not agreement.
Think of a stone arch. This is not because the stones have reconciled their differences, but because they are trapped by opposing pressures. The left side presses right and the right side presses left. Together they support the above weight. Stability is not the absence of conflict. That’s how the tension is maintained.
The universe itself is a tension between opposites: expansion and collapse, entropy and the stubborn consistency of matter. It will be something that was not possible before.
The best disagreements don’t just resolve disagreements. They create something new out of it.
Hegel is often dragged into this debate under the flat slogan “thesis + antithesis = synthesis.” That cliché makes him a schemata. He wasn’t proposing a compromise or middle ground. What he meant was that contradictions were not flaws to be fixed, but pressures that drove thought and history. The result is a new form of moving conflict forward, rather than just balance.
The challenge for liberal democracies is not to suppress conflict, but to maintain structures strong enough to sustain conflict. A healthy democracy depends on conflict, which we want to avoid.
Jacob, running away from his guilt and lost in the desert at night with a stone as his pillow, had a vision that said, “God is indeed in this place, but I did not know it.”
“One cannot believe in the impossible.”
We confuse trials with endings. Democracy is created when democracy becomes afraid of itself. Jacob wrestled with God and no less with the angels, refusing to let go until the blessing came. He left with a new name, a new future, and a dislocated hip.
Fear fails. Blessings do not end the struggle. It makes us limp.
notes and reading
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“Democratic Hypocrisy: Examining America’s Fragile Democratic Faith” — Democracy Fund (January 4, 2024). Fewer than one in 10 people consistently supports democratic norms. Commitment to democracy is often secondary to one side’s desire to win.
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The Long Revolution: The Founding of the United States After 1776—Nathan Perl-Rosenthal (Basic Books, on sale June 2, 2026). Only around the centennial of 1876 did Americans begin to think of the Revolution as “over,” a “sequence of events” belonging to the distant past. That was a mistake. The efforts of 1776 were by no means what followed us. The impact is still under debate.
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“For Afflicted Pluralism”—Verso Books (April 1, 2020). Introducing Chantal Mouffe political revivalcriticizes liberal democracy’s inability to grasp the essence of ethnic, religious, and nationalist conflicts. “Agonistic pluralism” aims to turn antagonism into an agon, or conflict.
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Believer’s Game — Believe before you judge insider opinions. peter elbow Embracing Contradictions: Explorations in Learning and Teaching (1986). Michael Polanyi gives a philosophical framework to this challenge. implicit dimension: Knowing is never pure detachment. It depends on trust, participation, and implicit commitment. this is michael Author Polanyi personal knowledgea groundbreaking figure in the philosophy of science, and not his brother Karl. great change He is famous for criticizing self-regulating markets.
Tao / Yin Yang
The expression of tension and conflict in this essay resonates with Taoist thought, especially the yin-yang pattern in which apparent opposites are not just enemies but interdependent. On a related topic, see Taoism and Taoism in previous Substack posts. Chuangzi (August 8, 2024): Paradox, flexibility, “pretending to be real” and the freedom not to impose rigid roles on reality. But contrast is important. In classical Taoism, the Tao is not a program for political struggle or historical progress. That’s the way things go when you’re not forced into a master plan. Yin and yang do not produce a higher synthesis. They reveal a world where opposites belong to each other. It is neither Hegel’s pressure of contradiction nor Jacob’s wounds and blessings, but it belongs nearby. Some tensions remain unresolved. They are forms of reality.
Jacob (Genesis 32)
Jacob cannot escape the struggle. He stays with it until it changes him. Blessings come with pain, new names, and no clear resolution. This does not exhaust the religious meaning of this story, but it does belong to it. Jacob does not walk away triumphant. He gets marked and leaves. This may be an eternal lesson. Some conflicts are not resolved and are transformed by refusing to let go.
new fire
deceived
Approximately 2+2=5
Source: 2 + 2 = 5 – williamgreen.substack.com
