Before Greatness: Detecting America’s Reawakening

It is worthwhile to take stock of America’s exceptional historical expression. We are in one of those moments when the question of democratic resilience is conspicuously before us.

Lost in our national preoccupation with democratic erosion is our documented history of recuperation or, as some have observed, our recognition of historical development as cyclical. Our seminar will take this one step further: Can we detect the seeds of recovery during periods of democratic backsliding? As we will argue, historical development is complicated by the observation that backsliding and proto recovery are simultaneous occurrences. In addition, recovery is not the same as resistance, for it is something new, something embryonic, and not merely a response. Early Christianity in the shadow of the Roman Empire is one example. Emancipation and the Civil Rights Acts, other examples, would never have materialized without their nascent, if subordinate, stages.

We are therefore interested in mining evidence of the democratic spirit during periods of democratic decline and how it might portend, as Lincoln remarked, the ascendance of “the better angels of our nature…as surely as [it] will be.”

Dennis Klein, Ph.D., is a certified American Philosophical Practitioners Association practitioner and client advocate as well as a visiting scholar at George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. He is a professor of history emeritus and director of the Jewish Studies program emeritus at Kean University. In addition, he is a Trust Network consulting partner. He writes and speaks about bystander responsibilities.

Donald Marks, Psy.D., is a professor at Kean University’s College of Health Professions and Human Services. He is a clinical health psychologist specializing in strategies for living with chronic pain and advanced illness, as well as a marriage and family psychologist.