Jean Bethke Elshtain spoke last Friday on the  topic of “Democracy on Trial Revisited.” The title was a reference to her 1995 book Democracy on Trial. Elshtain was one of several famous theorists and public intellectuals who wrote about the crisis of civil society in that period. She also served on prominent committees, including the National Commission on Civic Renewal, of which I was deputy director. Elshtain had her own distinctive positions and concerns, but the whole diverse conversation led directly to the creation of CIRCLE and indirectly influenced such institutions as the Tisch College of Citizenship (both founded in 2000-2001). CIRCLE and Tisch pay my salary, so I am indebted to the civil society debate of the 1990s.

On Friday, Elshtain noted that the civil society debate has faded, leaving relatively little residue. Actually, I think it left a significant legacy in the form of civic renewal work–although that work also has other inspirations and ancestries. But I agree that the national dialogue about civil society is now less prominent than it was in the 1990s. The grassroots repair work continues, as does regular academic research on civic engagement, but most celebrity intellectuals have moved on to other concerns. There is, for example, no national columnist who follows civil society or civic renewal work.

Different issues look salient at different moments. The electoral turnout of young people was one ingredient in the civil society debate of the 1990s. It had declined by about one third between 1972 and 1996, causing alarm. But if you add data from 2000-2008–and delete 1972 on the ground that it was a unique year, immediately following the lowering of the voting age —there is no decline in youth voting. The perspective of 2011 is quite different from that of 1995.

Elshtain was not especially concerned about voting. She argued in the 1990s that democracy was fraying because of incivility and certain forms of identity politics. Politics had become about who we were (our demands for recognition, rights, or redistribution, based on our identities), instead of what we thought was right. Americans were retreating into separate groups that proclaimed their differences, rather than making clams about equality, liberty, or justice for all.

Regardless of one’s value-judgment about identity politics, my sense is that the forms of identity politics that Elshtain found troubling are now quite marginal. For example, in her book, she quoted a gay rights activist who decried all forms of monogamy as heterosexual bias. We have since seen a great movement to expand monogamous legal marriage to gay Americans. I do not know what Elshtain thinks of gay marriage, but it is hardly the kind of separatist retreat into “difference” that she rejected in the 1990s.

On the other hand, some of today’s Tea Partiers strike me as purveyors of identity politics, in Elshtain’s sense. They demand recognition for who they are more than what they want. For example, Governor Perry asks for support because he is “the kind of guy who goes jogging in the morning packing a Ruger .380 with laser sights, loaded with hollow point bullets, and shoots a coyote that is threatening his daughter’s dog.” The point is that he is not an Ivy-League-educated, northern urbanite like the incumbent president.

There is nothing completely new about this kind of campaign rhetoric, but the country feels more deeply divided along such cultural lines. Identity claims loom larger and seem to drive beliefs and values, rather than the reverse. For example, you choose whether to believe in global warming because of who you are, not because of what you know.

Political discourse was central to Elshtain’s critique in the 1990s. She argued that because of identity politics, we were becoming angry, resentful, segregated, and “in danger of losing democratic civil society.” She presumed that democracy was discussion, debate, or dialogue–now being ruined by the wrong kind of assertions. In fact, the very first word of the book was “disagreement,” and Elshtain’s opening point was that we must learn to disagree well.

Indeed, talk is an important aspect of politics and democracy. But democracy is also a way of organizing the big institutions of society that promise fairly uncontroversial outcomes, such as making the union just, tranquil, and secure and promoting welfare and liberty for all. (See the Preamble of the Constitution.) To be sure, people disagree about such abstractions as liberty and welfare and how to balance them when they conflict. But there is also a lot of agreement that, for example, individuals ought to be safe walking down the street, and real incomes should rise as each generation contributes to the common welfare.

So are we angry because we have retreated into “racial, ethnic, gender, or sexually identified clans who demand to be ‘recognized’ only or exclusively as ‘different'” (as Elshtain wrote in 1995)? Or are we angry because our big institutions are not realizing the basic promises that all our leaders make? Is mutual dislike the problem, or are we just mad about poor performance?

In 1995, it was possible to view the performance of the American polity favorably (and thus focus on subtler aspects of our discourse and culture that seemed harmful). The economy was growing, we had just invented the Internet, and America felt securely at peace.

But again, to change the time frame changes one’s perspective. The performance of the American polity from 1972-2011 now looks quite poor. Before 1973, median incomes in the United States had always risen in tandem with economic growth. Since that year, annual real income growth has averaged below one percent per year, even though the economy has grown much faster. And since 2000, median families have gained nothing at all even though the overall GDP “pie” has grown.

Nobody argues that this kind of outcome is acceptable or desirable, yet it is what we get–along with two wars, terror attacks, millions of people in prison, and a decaying environment. I suspect that’s why we are cranky and distrustful. It also explains why the civil society debate has faded in favor of other concerns.

Yet it is unfortunate that prominent public intellectuals have turned away from civil society. Certain forms of civic engagement have continued to falter, even if we use the timeframe of 1972-2011. Trust in other people and in all large institutions still declines steadily. The proportion of people who report working together with others on common problems is still falling. Journalism, a key component of civil society, is in crisis with as many as one third of all paid journalists having been laid off.

Meanwhile, evidence continues to accumulate that civil society is important for precisely the kinds of large national problems that beset us today. Schools work better when parents participate, teenagers develop better when they have opportunities to serve, and civic engagement may even be a key to economic performance.