7 - Conclusions

Summary

The concluding chapter tackles some of the possible lessons from the founding that may serve us well today. It begins by discussing the contemporary dangers of confounding party membership with partisanship and explaining why such confusion is inimical to the spirit of compromise. The stakes are high, since for decades the common knowledge has been that political parties are the backbone of liberal democracies. Because I claim that the change in understandings of the self, nurtured by the digital revolution, is at least partially responsible for the worrisome loss of trust in parties and in the formalized channels of political representation, I return to the Puritan purged individualism in order to see what we may, politically speaking, expect from this change. Social media appears to be, like Puritanism, a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it helps individuals to engage in acts of identity disclosure and voluntary construction, encouraging in-group compromises. On the other hand, it promotes group conformity and ideological “Balkanization,” as it pushes individuals toward more extreme positions. I conclude with some considerations about the importance of rhetoric in shaping public opinion and, hopefully, in resuscitating the people’s two bodies.