Introduction: The Values Vacuum
American democracy has a fundamental problem: we make political decisions without agreeing on the values that guide those choices. When we lack clear principles, special interests take advantage. They advance their own agendas—maximizing profits, gaining power, avoiding accountability—that serve their narrow interests. Democratic decisions advance the nation’s interests by protecting individual liberty and building collective prosperity and security.
This capture by special interests has already happened. Financial deregulation led to the 2008 crisis that may have been the largest transfer of wealth in American history, destroying huge parts of the American middle class while those properties and assets ended up in the hands of wealthy investors. Insurance company lobbyists write healthcare policies. Fossil fuel companies block climate action through regulatory capture, and we are seeing the severe effects of global warming every day. Climate events are intensifying with documented economic costs, creating long-term challenges that require the kind of evidence-based, intergenerational planning that democracy should excel at. Tax policies shift burdens from corporations to individuals. This organized exploitation has transferred massive wealth upward, gutted the middle class, and created widespread economic insecurity and political anger. Special interests manipulate democracy’s vulnerabilities by exploiting our unclear principles.
Democracy is a values-based system of government, enshrined in our Declaration of Independence. When citizens share clear principles about what constitutes good decisions, democratic institutions function effectively. When citizens haven’t explicitly identified and agreed on their democratic values, special interests can exploit that confusion to advance their own agendas.
This article presents 33 core values organized into six categories. These values emerge from democratic theory and practice. I offer them as my contribution to the ongoing national conversation about what principles should guide American decision-making. Rather than prescribing outcomes, this framework helps citizens recognize the values already embedded in democratic institutions, identify their own priorities among these principles, and engage in political discourse based on explicit reasoning rather than partisan positioning.
Restoring values-based navigation to democratic decision-making provides essential protection against special interests who have gained excessive power by exploiting our unclear principles.