Between the 1619 Project and the 1776 Commission:

Finding a Middle Ground For a Higher Civics

By Paul Carrese
May 6, 2026

This essay is part of a symposium answering the question: “What is patriotic education?”

Can professors find a middle ground between negativity about all things American, and a narrow patriotism that ill suits our national spirit, with its hallmarks of discussion and debate?

Among the evergreen insights of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is that Americans exhibit a species of patriotism unknown in Europe, blending emotional gratitude for their country with a rational, discursive approach to government and politics. In other words, Americans have a “reflective patriotism.”

Today we face a crisis in our civic culture – marked by anger among a few and apathy among many, widespread distrust and increasing violence, and the poor state of civic education in schools and colleges. We should rediscover Tocqueville’s considered patriotism as a middle ground that helps us achieve a higher civics.

The cynical view of America is prevalent in K-12 and higher education, especially among leading institutions with the greatest curricular influence. Its explicit form can be seen in The 1619 Project, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History, and their various epigones, to include some forms of ethnic studies, action civics, and social-emotional learning. Its weaker version is the theory of democracy education that disregards study of America’s founding principles, their origins, and the 250 years of argument about how to live up to them. Many educators, citizens, and political figures dissatisfied with these approaches have coalesced in a rival school at the opposite pole, in the largely nostalgic-defensive patriotism exemplified by the 1776 Commission, now revived as the America 250 Civics Education Coalition.

There is a large, less-vocal middle—including views like my own that are closer to the 1776 Commission approach—that balances respect for America with appreciation for discussion of its failings and challenges. Yet the polarized, and polarizing, schools of 1619 and 1776 dominate. The teachers, schools, parents, academic units, and citizens holding a more reflective patriotism toward America have fewer voices, champions, and resources in our time of civic decay.

The effectively anti-patriotic utopianism of the 1619 school, and its weaker democracy-education cousin, portend a fast track toward America’s self-destruction. Neither hyper-critique nor perpetual democratic reinvention provide a sustainable civic model for America’s reality—that we are not a democracy, but a liberal constitutional democratic republic. These approaches free-ride on American liberty, prosperity, order, and relative equality while aggravating rather than redressing our polarization and civic decay. The blend of denunciation with demands for agency have left us too open to passion and demagoguery, thus destructive polarization.

Indeed, the civic amnesia yielded by a century of emphasizing abstract aims of democracy, participation, and progress has cut off most Americans from the reality that our Constitution was designed to address the endemic problem of factional disagreement in republics and democracies. Democracy education also means, in effect, amnesia about the greater success achieved by our constitutionalism than any other form of politics in fostering effective self-government amid perpetual disagreement—all while eventually producing ample progress in expanding participation, equality, and liberty.

The historical and civic principles of the 1776 school are generally more accurate and civically sound, yet its emphasis on a nostalgic-defensive patriotism is not an adequate remedy for the elite, cynical view. A narrowly patriotic civics ignores the American reality and spirit of e pluribus unum: our civic duty to find the sober patriotic balance of gratitude for our republic, civic honesty about our failures, and an optimistic spirit capable of reform.

The common ground of America, our founding principles and institutions, has included debate and disagreement from the beginning. I argue in my forthcoming book Teaching America: Reflective Patriotism in Schools, College, and Culture, that an American civics must perpetually strike the balance between regard for our distinctive ideals and reasonable disagreement about what they mean and whether we are abiding by their demands. This is the considered patriotism Tocqueville observed and admired. Our educators and civic leaders should rediscover it—and try to practice it during this America 250 period of civic commemorations and education.

A national-consensus effort at repairing K-12 civic education already exists. In 2019 I was asked by colleagues at Harvard, Tufts, and the educational provider iCivics to co-lead a bipartisan study that produced Educating for American Democracy: Excellence in History and Civics for All Learners (2021). Although the K-16 landscape is dominated by progressives, I was among a number of conservatives who were asked to join this effort. All of us agreed we had a duty to recognize that American civic culture was fractured, that civics was in deplorable shape—and that there are grounds for hope in re-forging an e pluribus unum across philosophical, demographic, geographic, and institutional dimensions.

Without much difficulty the lead team agreed an American civics must be grounded in civic and historical knowledge, but also in three civic virtues: civil disagreement, civic friendship across divergent philosophies and backgrounds, and reflective patriotism. We also argued K-12 civics never would be renewed unless higher education restored a priority place for this reflective American civics, in a more-discursive yet still patriotic mode.

For my colleagues in academia, reprioritizing a reflective American civics is in our enlightened self-interest. From Harvard’s Danielle Allen to Princeton’s Robert George, Johns Hopkins President Ronald Daniels to the Stanford Civics Initiative, academic leaders have articulated the opportunity to renew the academy’s Socratic culture by restoring serious and balanced civic education. This self-interest extends to acknowledging, and seeking to repair, the declining regard for academia among a broad American public. Allen proposes this renewal of civics as the crux of a renewed social contract between America and its universities.

The current self-inflicted threats to the perpetuation of our republic and its leading institutions should remind us, during the A250 commemorations, why we should care. Our founders were right that the activity of self-governing is an intrinsically worthy one. Whether in resisting tyranny in 1776 or later crises, or in enjoying the more quotidian tasks and conflicts that constitute self-government, we must perpetually recall the pledge in the Declaration of Independence that such citizenship is a matter of “sacred Honor.” Such a heavy responsibility requires a reflective patriotism that spurs continual civic commitment and learning.