This is Democracy – Episode 1: We Are All Characters in This Living Book of Democracy

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Speaker 1: This
Speaker 2: is democracy.
Speaker 3: A podcast that explores the
Speaker 4: interracial, intergenerational, and intersectional
Speaker 5: unheard voices living in the world’s
Speaker 6: most influential democracy.
Jeremi Suri: This is Democracy with Jeremi Suri. I’m a professor at the University of Texas and I’m here today for our first show and the beginning of our podcast with my son, Zachary Suri. Zachary, do you want to say hello?
Zachary Suri: Hi. (laughs)
Jeremi Suri: And we’re here to talk about democracy in our society today. We are living through a time when our democracy is challenged and when we must begin to ask new questions about what our democracy is about. Where we have come from, who we are today, and where we are going. This podcast is not a podcast about history alone. This podcast is not a podcast about politics. This is a podcast about understanding what democracy is and what it means and how our democracy will continue to grow and thrive, we hope, in our future. This is a podcast designed to bring different voices, the voices of the young like Zachary, the voices of experts, the voices of those who have thought about these issues, the voices of those who are living through these issues.
Most of all, this podcast is designed– and I’m so excited using this form, this podcast is designed to make the world of democracy real for all of us. One of the real challenges is that democracy has become about parchment paper and about institutions and arguments that don’t connect to our lives. If our democracy is to thrive, it must become a part of our lives again. And this podcast is to showcase, to inspire, and to help us think through how democracy can be more of who we are and what we do going forward. And how we can all be better for it. So we have high aspirations, we’re going to have a lot of fun. We’re going to be intellectuals, but we’re also going to be citizens and we’re also going to be young people making fun of the world that we live in and improving it. It’s going to be a great adventure and we’re excited to get started. Zachary, what does democracy mean to you?
Zachary Suri: Well I think democracy is about engagement and everyone getting a voice in society and having a chance to tell their story.
Jeremi Suri: And as a thirteen-year-old in Austin, Texas, do you feel that you have a voice in our society? Do you feel our society gives you a way to participate?
Zachary Suri: Well, yes, but I think also sometimes I feel that, that like my voice and other voices aren’t heard as much as they should be and that instead voices of older people who are not necessarily as idealistic and coming up with new ideas, are heard more often just because they are more well-established and not because they’re better.
Jeremi Suri: Right, right. How do you think, Zachary, that we could get more voices from young people like yourself who care about issues, care about education, care about the environment, care about immigration– how could we get more voices like yours into our society?
Zachary Suri: Well with podcasts like this. (laughs)
Jeremi Suri: Yay!
Zachary Suri: And also I guess, I think a lot of like showcasing youth voices and giving them like a national stage. Like why should, why should it only be only be older people talking about politics on television and on the radio? Why should— there should be more, I think, of what we’re doing here with young people voicing their opinions as well as old people side by side, so we can see how the different generations think about democracy today and in the future.
Jeremi Suri: Right, so building more conversation, right? One of my heroes, who’s in many ways an inspiration for this show in addition to Zachary being an inspiration for this, is Franklin Roosevelt. And as, I think, most of our listeners know, Franklin Roosevelt was a politician. He was a man who came from a very privileged family and he was a man who went into many of the traditional institutions of politics after going through an educational system and various other— what we might call “rites of passage” into the world of politics. But he turned out to be president during a time, in many ways similar to our own. Our time when many Americans were beginning to become uncertain about the future of our democracy. A time of grave inequality, a time of foreign conflict, and most of all, a time of a lot of pessimism and partisanship, when people were calling each other names more than they were addressing some of the core issues behind the Depression and World War II.
And Franklin Roosevelt used his presidency, not to offer answers from on high, but to bring more voices in, to do what Zachary was just talking about, to bring more voices in, African-American voices, the voices of immigrants, the voices of many groups that certainly had not had a voice in his party before and that had not had a voice through the presidency. He gave them a voice. In some ways his wife Eleanor Roosevelt was even more important as a vehicle for the voices of women and the voices of minorities. This period in American history had many problems, but I think it should inspire us today to recognize that we can bring more people in. And there are some words from Franklin Roosevelt that inspire me that I want us to talk about. We’re going to try in each podcast–
Zachary Suri: And that’s what makes him so amazing and unique, is that he came from such a privileged background and he had done everything that he needed to do to be successful, but because of his dealings with illness and seeing people suffer in poverty and things like that, he was able to bring a voice through his own privilege and take advantage of his privilege to help others.
Jeremi Suri: Right, right. To actually use his privilege as a vehicle to give voice to those who did not have, did not have privilege, right? How did he do that, Zachary?
Zachary Suri: Well I think he was able to remove himself from the, like, typical circles to find ordinary people and talk with them. And then he was able to take that and mix it with his own ideas to find solutions, or at least things to try.
Jeremi Suri: Yes, yes. I think also, just building on that, I think he understood that democracy was about experimentation. Democracy was about pursuing different voices. He understood what we often forget, that it’s not about having the right answers, it’s about bringing people in to help them find their own answers. It’s about what Franklin Roosevelt called, “a bold experiment” and bold, persistent, experimentation. We don’t experiment enough in our society and if you don’t experiment, your democracy grows stale. Here are the words from Franklin Roosevelt that inspire me and I think inspire Zachary and I hope will inspire a whole generation of our listeners now. We’re hoping our podcast will live to these words of what democracy can be. These are words from Franklin Roosevelt in 1940–
Zachary Suri: Actually I haven’t– I actually haven’t heard this before. (laughs)
Jeremi Suri: “This generation of Americans,” Roosevelt said, “is living in a tremendous moment of history. The surge of events abroad has made doubters among us ask: ‘Is this the end of a story that has been told? Is the book of democracy now to be closed and placed away upon the dusty shelves of time?’ My answer is this: ‘All we have known of the glories of democracy– its freedom, its efficiency as a mode of living, its ability to meet the aspirations of the common man— all these are merely an introduction to the greater story of a more glorious future.’ We Americans today— all of us” And I think he was speaking to young boys like Zachary and African-Americans and immigrants and all sorts of groups as well as long time citizens. “We Americans of today— all of us”—
(crossfades to audio clip of Roosevelt speaking)
Franklin Roosevelt: We are characters in this living book of democracy. But we are also its author. It falls upon us now to say whether the chapters that are to come will tell a story of retreat or a story of continued advance.
(applause)
And so, with you again, I believe that the American will– people, the American people will say: “Go forward!”
(applause)
(audio clip ends)
Jeremi Suri: I love the way Roosevelt talks about the book of democracy, a book that’s continuing to be written. And a book where we are characters, we are characters because we’ve inherited roles. We’ve inherited roles because of where we’re born, we’ve inherited roles because of how we’ve been educated. We’ve inherited roles because of the institutions we’re in, but we’re not just the inheritors, we’re not just the characters– we’re also the authors. We’re re-writing it every day. And one of the biggest challenges we have today is to define our authorship. How are we going to author a new democracy? What are the ways we can do this? And one of the points of this podcast is for all of us to use history, not to relive the past, but to help inform us today about the ways we can continue to author our democracy, not just participate in it, but to author it. Because by looking passed where we are today, looking to the past, we can see how others have changed our democracy over time, for good and for ill, and find inspiration– ideas for how we can do new things today. Drawing on the wisdom of that past. If you don’t know the past, you are stuck in an eternal present. If you don’t know the past, you have made yourself an orphan. And we have become in some ways an orphan democracy because we don’t use the past to inspire us to change as history would tell us we should, we use the past to tell us we must be stuck where we are. We can’t change–
Zachary Suri: Well and also, without knowing the past you can’t, you can’t think towards the future because it feels like you’re stuck, as you said, in the present. If you don’t know your past, you can’t see the trend of where you’re going and either reverse it or change it and add your own style to it, or continue it and fight to continue to do it.
Jeremi Suri: Right, right. And being an author is adding your style, I love that. I love the way you said that. How, Zachary, do you think that those of us who are older and have more voice now, how is it that we can help younger people to be authors of our democracy? One of the goals of this podcast is to get young people more engaged, well I hope young people are listening, and for them to become authors, not just characters in our democracy.
Zachary Suri: Well, I think that’s a really hard question, but I think—
Jeremi Suri: Well, that’s why I asked it.
Zachary Suri: (laughs) I think also, I think that one of the main things is that we need to teach history and critical thinking, like, more than simple like vocational skills, or things that are technical because I feel like that oftentimes what I learn in school is not thinking about our democracy and thinking about our society, but— and coming up with my own ideas. But technical aspects that— some of it is necessary, but a lot of it I feel doesn’t contribute to society and doesn’t contribute to me being a good citizen.
Jeremi Suri: And so, topics and subjects that are not addressed that should be addressed?
Zachary Suri: I think that history is just as important as— history and literature and other liberal arts are just as important as more of the mathematical and scientific things, which also help you think, but I feel that the liberal arts are important for your place in society and that we need to use science and math as a supplement to the liberal arts, but our focus can’t be just on science and math.
Jeremi Suri: Yeah, I often think that one of our problems with ethics today and integrity is that we don’t actually teach that as much as we teach technical abilities and capabilities. So we’re teaching people to do a lot, but not teaching them why and not teaching them what the ethical foundation should be for what they do.
Zachary Suri: Well, I think some of the, like the ethical problems are just, many of them are like ethical problems in terms of people– of corruption and things, like not necessarily on a personal, like, basis of how you think, but corruption and cheating and things like that, I think those are just a product of our society that’s not being as self-reflective as it should be. But I don’t think that’s like new, I think that’s been happening for a long time.
Jeremi Suri: Right, right.
Zachary Suri: It’s just sort of starting to come out now because it’s, it’s sort of lost the respectability of the past and that I think is like a good thing because it means that we see what it is and we know it has to change, whereas before, we saw these things, sort of, as respectable as okay and now it’s starting to change.
Jeremi Suri: What motivates you to think about this? I think a lot of listeners will be surprised that a thirteen year old thinks so much about this as you do.
Zachary Suri: Well I just think it’s the most important thing to think about because our future doesn’t just depend on an older generation, it depends on my generation and the generations after me. And I think that if I think about it, I am at least contributing in my small part to society and our global reckoning with democracy and where it’s going to go.
Jeremi Suri: What does democracy mean to you?
Zachary Suri: Well I think it just means– to me the most important part of democracy is that everyone gets their own opinion and everyone gets a voice to share. And it, I don’t think– in my opinion, democracy isn’t just one, the technical, everyone gets a vote, it’s everyone gets a say, everyone gets a voice. Whether, even me who is not even close to being able to vote yet–
Jeremi Suri: Maybe you should, I hope listeners recognize maybe we should have more people like you voting.
Zachary Suri: But I think that means that I can still have a voice and everyone can have a voice. And that at least you have the chance to have your opinions be taken seriously and thought of as legitimate and not just some fringe of society.
Jeremi Suri: Right, right, right. And what about this word, “public”? It comes up in a lot of Roosevelt speeches. One of the things we learn as historians is during this difficult period in our society, during the Great Depression and World War II, there were a lot of bad things and a lot of good things happening. But one good thing that happened was people came to think about the public as more a part of their lives, they believed they had to do things for the public. That they were dependent on the public, they needed help from the public, but they also felt an obligation to do things for the public. If you think of what is involved in actually being in the military, or being in a civilian conservation core camp.
Zachary Suri: I think that’s more of, like, a side effect or democracy, because I think that’s what democracy does for a society is that it allows there to be a public sense that even though we’re a very individualistic society, you can have a very public face that can– that at lease encourages respectability and ethics, as you were saying, and this sort of reminds me of this book we read in school called the Lord of the Flies.
Jeremi Suri: Great!
Zachary Suri: ‘Cause in the book, there’s a bunch of kids and they’re stranded on an island, and in the beginning, they’re sort of helping the public, the group, trying to find, trying to find food and get rescued, but then, as they sort of get dissatisfied with the system and start to find problems, they move away from that, move away from the so-called democracy, and become society that is savage and doesn’t respect the public. There’s no public sense.
Jeremi Suri: Why does that happen?
Zachary Suri: Well, it happens because they lose their sense of society because they’re not part of a larger public, because as part of a larger public you feel that you have a voice, but when it’s just you and a few other people alone, and that’s the only world you know, that you lose that sense of the public, and you lose that sense of democracy, and you revert to the most crude emotions, instead of the emotions that are more sophisticated and controllable that democracy and the idea of the public promotes.
Jeremi Suri: Many people say that our problem today, in contrast to the period we’ve been talking about, and in contrast to Lord of the Flies, that our problem today is that too many young people are on their screens, that they’re not interacting with other people. And they sort of blame– you’ve heard this– they sometimes blame young people for our problems.
Zachary Suri: Well, I kind of get that, but I kind of agree with some of that, but I also think it’s a little– I think it’s also a little bit of a ridiculous argument, because it’s not like us being on screens or doing things like that takes us out of society. We’re still a part of society, and in fact, we’re more engaged in society because of that, whereas I feel like it’s pretty complacent of those who say that to say that, because in their own time, there has always been something like social media or screen time. And it looks today as if it’s horrible, but I think that the same problems that we have today, we had before, and we go through them, and it actually allowed people to stay engaged in society more, like television made us feel more of a larger, more sophisticated and complex public that had people from all over the country, and all over the world, and I think that social media eventually will do the same. I think the way that it’s being used is what should be focused on, not actually the amount it’s being used.
Jeremi Suri: Well, it’s an important historical insight in that, that every new communications technology always at first seems to disrupt and seems to undermine people and their assumption about how the public and how democracy should work. People worried that newspapers, that yellow journalism in the late 19th century was spreading too much fake news. William Randolph Hearst and others were seen in some ways as destroyers of democracy, as threats to democracy. The same was true with radio. There was concern about hate radio. It’s not just a 21st century phenomena. There was an early 20th century phenomenon with individuals like Father Coughlin and others who used the radio to spread hate.
(plays audio clip of Father Coughlin speaking)
Father Coughlin: I come before you today. I wish to leave this thought with you. We will endorse a candidate who can rise above his party and puts patriotism first. Therefore under your congressional district presidents, form your battalions, take up the shield of your defense, unsheathe the sword of your truth, and carry on in Illinois, shows that the Communists on the one hand cannot scourge us and that the modern Capitalists on the other cannot plague us.
(audio clip ends)
Jeremi Suri: Then television, people worried about television in this sense as well, and I think we’re sort of at the moment in social media. And there’s always a tendency to blame the users, rather than to think about the ways that we all as a society could make that form of communications technology more effective in bringing us together.
Zachary Suri: Because TV and radio, when they first came out, they were regulated. They had– there was always a body that decided how radios could–
Jeremi Suri: Well, not always. Not always. That actually– one of, one of the–
Zachary Suri: But there was an idea that should be, that should be a given. That should be something we’re working towards.
Jeremi Suri: There was a commitment by not just government but by many who were using these technologies to find a way to use these technologies to bring people together. Right?
Zachary Suri: I think that that needs to be– I think that should be a product of social media, but I think that’s actually the fault of those who are a generation ahead of those who are now criticized for using social media too much, because they didn’t lay the groundwork for there to be proper regulation and proper etiquette on social media. And I think that it’s not necessarily our generation’s fault that the way we use it isn’t the most democratic or the most positive. And I think that we should be working towards that as our generation should be focused on meeting that goal, but I think that we should also recognized that it’s not just the young people’s fault. It’s those who came before, and the way that our government decided to deal with social media.
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Jeremi Suri: The last question I’m going to ask you for today, Zachary, is a question of we’re going to close every podcast program on the question of hope. I’d like us to close every one of our discussions, every one of our podcast discussions, on a hopeful note and talking about hope, because democracy, as Roosevelt himself said, is about hope: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” It’s hope that must be the engine of democratic growth, and hope that’s the authorship of our democracy. What makes me hopeful, Zachary, is you, that there’s so many young people out there who want to make a difference, who want to be authors of a new democracy. It’s because hope is so important and because we need more in our lives today that every one of our podcast episodes will involve some history, and will involve young voices like Zachary’s.
We will have different people that we’ll interview each week, and different historical moments that we’ll reference as inspiration each week, and we’ll focus on different topics. But as a whole, we’re having a conversation about where our democracy is, what we can learn from the past, and how we can continue to grow and make ourselves better authors of our democratic future.
And there’s no better way to do this than through the podcast, because the podcast allows us a chance to connect with people, and the very way we produce this podcast is a representation of what we’re talking about. We have guests like Zachary. We have the Liberal Arts Technology Studio, which involves all kinds of young people, all kinds of students, all kinds of young people using new technologies to communicate to a new audience. We have the audio team, we have the technology team, and I want to thank them, not just for the work they normally do, but for being part of this conversation here.
Zachary Suri: And the way we produce this podcast here at UT is very democratic. And then we send it out for anyone to listen to. It’s sort of emblematic of the idea of democracy, at exploring the ideas of our democracy.
Jeremi Suri: It is indeed. And we’re hoping that all of our listeners will encourage in a very democratic way everyone they know to listen while they’re working out, or while they’re driving, or whatever it is they’re doing. We are hopeful because the sources or change are in front of us every day, the sources of experimentation, and this show is about getting us to do that, to think about it, to pursue it, and that’s why this is democracy.
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Speaker 1: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts Development Studio, and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.
Speaker 2: The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harrison Lemke, and you can find his music at harrisonlempke.com.
Speaker 3: Subscribe and stay tuned for a new episode, every Thursday, featuring new perspectives on democracy.
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