Anne Norton is the Stacey and Henry Jackson President's Distinguished Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of seven books, including Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire, 95 Theses on Politics, Culture, and Method, and On the Muslim Question.

• Forward


• Theses for democrats


• I. Anarchy, courage, democracy


• 1. Anarchy is the shadow and salvation of democracy. Authoritarianism is the enemy.


• 2. For anarchy, we need the anarchic.


• 3. Democrats are shabby.


• 4. Fear is the enemy of the democrat.


• 5. If people are to rule themselves, they must have courage.


• 6. Democrats take risks.


• II. Free people keep something wild in them


• 1. Rebellion is not only a right: it is a duty.


• 2. The democratic citizen is both subject and sovereign.


• 3. Self rule is a discipline.


• 4. Empire is the enemy of the democratic.


• 5. Free people keep something wild in them.


• IV. The canon of Western political philosophy was forged against the people.


• 1. The canon of Western political philosophy was forged against the people.


• 2. Forget Athens. Forget democratic genealogies.


• V. Democracies are generative. Democracies are excessive. Democrats live with open hands.


• 1. Democracies are places of wild diversity.


• 2. The democratic disposition is cosmopolitan.


• 3. How free people love their countries.


• 4. Democracies are generative. Democracies are excessive. Democrats live with open hands.


• 5. All you need for democracy is humanity.


• VI. Taxes are how people pay for the work they do together.


• 1. Democratic politics is born from human fragility.


• 2. The strength of the poor is the strength of democracy.


• 3. Want and democratic drive.


• 4. Taxes are how the people pay for the work they do together.


• VII. Rights are born in the body.


• 1. Rights are grounded in the body.


• 2. People have the right to life, to liberty and to the pursuit of happiness.


• 3. People have the right to speak and to be silent.


• 4. People have the right to assemble.


• 5. People have the right to a place in the world. People have the right to move.


• 6. Rights are inalienable.


• 7. Rights are common.


• 8. Rights find their limits in the body.


• VIII. Free People rule the law.


• 1. Rights are above, below and beyond the law. Rights undergird the law. Rights elevate the law.


• 2. Rule law. Do not simply be ruled by it.


• 3. People should judge.


• 4. The people are wise.


• 5. Democracies depend on truth.


• 6. Truth prospers when the people rule.


• IX. Liberalism is a problem for democracy.


• 1. Undemocratic governments are unjust but not all democracies are just. Democracy is a necessary but not sufficient condition for justice.


• 2. The problem with liberalism


• 3. In defense of populism.


• 4. Institutions alone cannot ensure that the people rule.


• 5. How free people might choose their leaders.


• 6. Decentralization protects the rule of the people.


• 7. People can always recall their representatives, servants and officials.


• 8. Executive energy belongs to the many rather than the one.


• 9. The people, steering.


• X. Force is the enemy of the free.


• 1. Military power is a danger to democracy.


• 2. Free people go to war together or not at all.


• 3. Private weaponry is an offense to free people.


• 4. Punishment demeans the democratic.


• 5. Free people are not policed.


• XI. We have not yet finished with revolution.


• 1. Without free and courageous people, there are no democratic governments.


• 2. We are not democrats yet. We do not yet rule ourselves.


• 3. Self rule is a discipline.


• 4. We have not yet finished with revolution.


• 5. Democracy is not an idyllic state, democracy is a struggle.


• 6. Democracy is fugitive.


• XII. The time of the democratic is past, present and future.


• 1. Democracy is episodic


• 2. The time of democracy is a time of celebration.


• 3. The time of democracy is a time of danger.


• 4. The time of democracy is a time of creation


• 5. Democratic time is sacred time.


• 6. The time of the democratic is past, present, and future.


• XIII. People who rule themselves look both forward and back.


• 1. Democrats are conservative, progressive and radical.


• 2. Democracy moves upward.


• 3. Democracy moves downward.


• 4. People who rule themselves look both forward and back.


• XIV. Free people carry the democratic with them.


• 1. Assembly preserves the anarchic. Assembly nurtures the democratic.


• 2. Democracy belongs to the city.


• 3. Democracy belongs to the country.


• 4. Free people carry the democratic with them. They should carry it into the factory, the shop, the school.


• 5. Democracy cannot be fenced out of the economic realm or separated from the social.


• 6. The rule of the people lives and is endangered in each person's body.


• XV. The friends and enemies of the democratic and how to deal with them.


• 1. Equality is proper to democracy.


• 2. Inequality corrupts democracy.


• 3. Friendship teaches people to live democratic lives.


• 4. The enemies of the democratic and how to deal with them.


• XVI. Let us walk like gods.


• 1. In ruling themselves, people become divine.


• 2. The voice of the people is the voice of God.


• 3. The people sing.


• 4. The earth belongs to the living.


• Appendix of Imperatives


• Acknowledgements

Wild Democracy calls for a more anarchic, more courageous democracy. This is an ethic for people who know the rights they hold, and who struggle to rule themselves. This is an ethic for pirates and rebels; an ethic for those who will not be mastered. Democracy is always a risky business; full of promise and danger. The promise is freedom. The danger is fear: fear of the unknown, fear of the unruly, fear of one another, fear of anarchy. Fear leads to authoritarianism. Anarchy leads to courage, to self-reliance, self-discipline, and self-rule. Liberals and conservatives look to institutions to control an unruly people. Anne Norton's vision of democracy turns on democratic people: on ethics, practices, and the courage to rule ourselves.