Does it take Bruce Springsteen and his outlaw couple to raise and force the issue of democracy's everyday dissemination of violence as well as its blindness, indifference, and willful helplessness in the face of it? Democracy legitimizes violence by the state, but this violence is performed for democratic ends infrequently. The state, though democracy's official representative, routinely acts against democracy, including when the people themselves try to act on its behalf. If democratic societies need to install constitutional mechanisms that precommit them to minister to democracy's conditions of possibility, what else needs to be done? Do democratic citizens need to break the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of violence when the state fails to protect or itself violates their basic social and political rights, including the right to a life free from assorted violence? Do democratic citizens need to cultivate a tragic ethos that presumes democracy has enemies, including at times the state, and that credibility is not just an inherent political anxiety in its foreign affairs but also a critical political concern in its domestic affairs to which they must attend with vigilance and zeal? Constitutional patriotism seems a well-suited vehicle to address these questions – at least initially.

DEMOCRACY'S DRAMATIC TURN

Constitutional patriotism enjoys a distinct theoretical presence in contemporary democratic thought (more so perhaps in Europe than in the United States) by issuing a tantalizing political promise.