So long to John Lewis, a hero of the republic

[Bloomberg]( Follow Us //link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/click/20958396.16245/aHR0cHM6Ly90d2l0dGVyLmNvbS9ib3Bpbmlvbg/57d8157f3f92a424d68d6450Bf6d21eee [Get the newsletter](hash=b9b2681361bede0e1069ca238efb1ec2) Get Jonathan Bernstein’s newsletter every morning in your inbox. [Click here to subscribe](hash=b9b2681361bede0e1069ca238efb1ec2). Representative John Lewis, an enormous figure in the fight for democracy in the U.S., [died Friday](. My thoughts on his importance are similar to [what Adam Serwer wrote](. The crucial thing to understand about the U.S. before the civil-rights movement — before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — is that it could only tenuously be described as a democracy. Democracies involve collective self-government, which is one of those things that seems fairly straightforward but gets quite complicated once you consider the details. At the very least, it requires that everyone in the republic participate as equals. Each part of that formula is necessarily contested. Who is “everyone”? What does it mean to “participate”? In what sense are they “equals”? And yet to exclude a large number of people from any role in public life, including the vote, based solely on their race goes well beyond a legitimate argument about what counts as democracy. And even when Black voting became possible, a system of apartheid in one part of the nation and various forms of discrimination elsewhere meant that there was no chance of political equality. How exactly to characterize the pre-1965 U.S. is complicated. But that it fell well short of democracy isn’t complicated at all. One measure of the immense progress that Lewis and so many others achieved is that we can now argue about the extent to which the United States is currently a democracy — we can argue about “everyone” and “participate” and “equal” as theoretical and empirical questions. And, yes, we can argue about how seriously our democracy is backsliding. We have the civil-rights movement to thank for having something to backslide from. Lewis dedicated his life to creating self-government. He was willing to die for it. Few have known political freedom as well as he did, since he was able to experience it as it was being denied, as it was being created and as it became a way of life. He understood and lived political action — his “good trouble” — throughout his life. I’m generous with the term “hero of the republic,” but if anyone deserved it, John Lewis did. 1. Cindy D. Kam and John Sides on [public opinion about the pandemic](. 2. Allen Sumrall at A House Divided on [the Supreme Court and institutional rivalry](. 3. Kevin Wallsten and Rachel VanSickle-Ward at the Monkey Cage on the [contraception fight after the Supreme Court](. 4. Eric Levitz [interviews David Shor](. 5. Harry Enten on [law and order in the 2020 election](. 6. Karen Tumulty on the [extraordinary self-dealing within the Trump campaign](. 7. And my Bloomberg Opinion colleague David Fickling on [flying after the pandemic](. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. [Click here to subscribe](hash=b9b2681361bede0e1069ca238efb1ec2). Also subscribe to [Bloomberg All Access]( and get much, much more. You’ll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close.  Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](.  You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Early Returns newsletter. [Unsubscribe]( | [Bloomberg.com]( | [Contact Us]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022