Everybody Counts

In a letter to James Madison in 1789, Thomas Jefferson asserted: “The earth should belong … always to the living generation.” For the rest of Jefferson’s life, he “often returned to the linked themes of freedom, fresh starts, and the folly of old customs and laws binding new generations.”1 America did not start out as a democracy. It took several generations to evolve. And just as the elitism of conservative Whigs and Federalists gradually yielded to Jeffersonians and Jacksonians,2 the credentialed experts of our time may find it advisable to make more room for, and work with, engaged citizens. Perhaps the “living generation” of this era might look anew at the culture of professionalism that has largely ignored the experience and judgment of ordinary citizens for more than a century. In creating such an unnecessary divide, many experts assume they can serve the public interest on their terms, and too many citizens have come to accept the terms. Too many professionals may work for the public, but not with the public. It is the “task monopoly” of credentialed specialists that “shrinks the space of democratic authority and disables and immobilizes citizens who might occupy that space.”3 As William Schambra put it: When professionals already “have a map of the problem in their heads and a map of the solution … no matter how open-ended they say they are to community input, that’s all it is, is community input.”4 John McKnight has gone even further to argue that there are many professionals in the service industry “who believe that they are in direct competition with communities for the power to correctly define problems [and] provide scientific solutions.5