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Most analysts agree that democratic theorists have not offered a persuasive answer to the question of how the boundaries of a demos, a democratic people, should legitimately be defined. Some contend that boundaries should be maintained in ways that preserve sufficient sense of common identity to sustain support for redistributive policies. Many others endorse the "principle of all affected interests," but it has been widely criticized as unrealistically destructive of too many existing community boundaries. This essay argues for an alternative "principle of constituted identities." It holds that, subject to certain important qualifications, modern constitutional democracies, at least, are morally obligated to extend the option of full membership to all those whose identities have been substantially constituted through such regimes' coercive policies. Adapted from the source document.

Political theorists have argued for and against the propriety of a civic ethics of "public reason" that would set normative bounds on the expression of religious views in the public discourse of government officials and, to a lesser degree, citizens. This essay explores whether critics of ethical restraints on religious discourse have grounds to criticize the religious rhetoric of President George W. Bush. Quantitative and qualitative studies show that Bush has used a distinctive "prophetic" mode of religious expression more often than any modern predecessor. This sort of religious discourse is argued to be ethically dubious from the standpoints of most public reason advocates and most of their critics. Even as it champions democracy and adherence to the plans of divine providence, it discourages and de-legitimates democratic dissent and fails to provide the religious guidance it promises.

In the 19thcentury, the greatest questions concerning American citizenship were whether this new modern experiment in large-scale republican self-governance could work at all, and whether its initial reliance on slavery could be overcome. The answers proved to be that a large-scale republic centered on commercial, not martial aspirations could indeed endure, and that it could achieve the elimination of chattel slavery, though not without enormous costs. In the 20thcentury, the major issues became whether formally equal citizenship could be extended to all adults, regardless of race and gender. The answer proved to be that women and non-whites could gain genuine possession of the franchise and access to public office, even if only through great civic struggles, and even if those gains still left the nation far short of achieving practical equality in many spheres of public and private life. Though much remains to be explored in regard to those past developments, it is obviously timely now to ask, "What are the major issues facing American citizenship in the 21stcentury?" It is also tempting to speculate about how laws and public policies will deal with them, though that quest of course carries us out over even thinner ice.

My comments on Charles Williams' "Racial Politics of Progressive Americanism" can be brief, because it is an excellent essay and I could not agree more with its central argument. Williams demonstrates that, even though United Automobile Workers (UAW) leaders used the language of racial equality to support some civil rights advances, Walter Reuther and others also invoked a merely formal equality to deny power to blacks thought to be allied with Communists, and to sustain the support of anti-black workers. They pretended that African Americans were an ethnic group like those of many European-descended Americans, ignoring the enormous differences in the oppression black Americans had long experienced and continued to experience (and still experience). In these ways, an Americanist language, arguably a "liberal" language, of equal rights worked against the racial equality it purported to honor. On these points, I am fully persuaded.

Responds to Charles Williams' "Racial Politics of Progressive Americanism" (Spring 2005). While there is agreement with the central argument of the essay, Williams's claims that the author is at fault for downplaying exclusionary practices of liberal language are refuted. L. Collins Leigh