The Center Must Hold

“Having engaged with Schlesinger’s thinking, readers should ask themselves: Here in the 21st century, what are the greatest threats to the liberal democratic project at home and abroad?”

At times like the present, when politics is exceedingly partisan and personal, reminding ourselves of the greatness of the American experiment—of liberal democratic capitalism, written constitutionalism, majority rule, cultural pluralism, and safeguards for individual rights—is essential. Our political bouts have turned inwards, mercilessly focused on litigating past and present points of mutual grievance, and they have grown increasingly tribal, allergic to nuanced thinking and coalition-building around discrete issues of common concern. As we perform outrage vis-à-vis each other and denigrate the value of the society, economy, history, and government that shapes the contours of American life, we fail to appreciate the sanctity of the polity—and the past sacrifices, political theory, and insights into human nature undergirding it—that has been bequeathed to us. We lose sight of the awesome value of the republic we have been tasked with keeping.

That our internal squabbles have become so all-consuming while ideological foes like China grow more powerful and confident is somewhat surprising, as external threats tend to push us to look beyond domestic disputes. When an external “other” menaces the very existence of “us,” our enthusiasm for demonizing our fellow in-group members should wane. In light of the threat they pose, external dangers have a way of clarifying who we are and what we hold most dear as a nation. The Cold War was one such period in our national life that opened up pathways for heightened clarification, self-definition, and valuation. Many Americans failed to take advantage of such opportunities, opting instead to throw in their lot with demagogues like Senator Joseph McCarthy and to denigrate the liberal democratic values which communism threatened (and which they themselves purported to uphold) in the process. But others, like Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., allowed the Cold War and the communist menace to sharpen and illuminate their thinking regarding the nature of the American experiment, its value, and how best to preserve it.

In his 1949 book, The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom, Schlesinger mounts a defense of liberal democracy (the vital center) in the face of the right-wing and left-wing political extremes of fascism and communism. Written in the aftermath of Nazism’s demise and in the early years of Cold War competition between the U.S. and USSR, The Vital Center used the real-world prevalence of totalitarian political ideologies like fascism and communism to remind its American readers of the immense value of their experiment in liberal democratic self-governance. In doing so, Schlesinger offers sharp insights into human nature and government.