WHEN REASON PREVAILS

IN AN ERA WHERE democracy seems increasingly fragile, a centuries-old tradition quietly proved its worth in Manchester-by-the-Sea. Our most recent Special Town Meeting—a direct citizen democracy format dating back to colonial New England—demonstrated how informed citizens can still govern themselves effectively.
I'll admit, I’ve had moments when I was impatient and dismissed these meetings as tedious exercises in local bureaucracy. But watching our community tackle complex state-mandated zoning changes revealed something remarkable: when given the right conditions, democracy doesn't just survive—it thrives.  The high school gymnasium that evening told its own story—with record attendance spilling into an adjacent auditorium, drawn there to vote on the controversial issue of whether to comply with state-mandated multifamily zoning.
This scene could have devolved into chaos.  The stakes were high, and positions deeply held.  As someone who helped develop the design guidelines for the proposed zoning changes, I arrived prepared for confrontation.

Instead, something unexpected emerged.  The majority of residents came armed with opinions, but also with curiosity to understand and ask questions about the state-required zoning, density calculations, approval processes, and affordable housing requirements.  While national headlines chronicle democratic institutions under stress, our meeting that evening offered a counternarrative.  This wasn't democracy as spectacle—it was democracy as serious work.  In the end, civic engagement and facts won the day.

 

Living in an Age of Distrust
Yet this achievement in local democracy occurred against a troubling national backdrop.  While our town meeting demonstrated the power of structured debate, deftly handled by our town moderator, our broader democratic institutions face mounting pressures. 

The contrast is striking.  As our community worked through complex zoning details using Robert's Rules of Order and verifiable facts, elsewhere we've seen the questioning of election integrity and expert knowledge as 'elitist' thinking.  The same week our town celebrated a victory for fact-based decision-making, national headlines chronicled fresh challenges to democratic norms that the Founders considered sacred.
 Increasingly, social media algorithms accelerate the spread of misinformation—a recent MIT study found false news travels six times faster than truth online.  Trust in national institutions continues to erode, and partisan rhetoric often drowns out reasoned discourse.
This rapid spread of falsehoods undermines the informed decision-making essential to a healthy democracy.  It feeds mistrust, fuels polarization, and leaves citizens less equipped to engage in meaningful discourse.
Compounding this is the erosion of local journalism, a cornerstone of democratic accountability. (Shout out to our local paper, The Cricket, for keeping a local source alive!) Since 2005, more than 2,500 local newspapers have shuttered, as documented by the University of North Carolina's Hussman School of Journalism and Media (“The Expanding News Desert”, 2020).  More recent data from Northwestern University's Medill School shows that over 360 newspapers closed between late 2019 and May 2022, accelerating the trend.
These closures create “news deserts,” where communities lack credible local reporting, leaving a vacuum often filled by partisan sources, further straining trust in institutions.  When communities lose their local news outlets, they also lose the detailed, reliable reporting that keeps citizens informed and leaders accountable.
The increasing danger of the spread of false information and a decline in reliable local and nonpartisan news requires robust regulation and renewed commitments to factual reporting from news sources—big undertakings.

 

So, what else can we do?
This is a good time to do the work of changing our conversations at the local, state and federal levels.

While national conversations remain divided, Sweden offers an instructive model for moving forward. In the 1990s, I studied a courageous and transformative program in Sweden, The Natural Step (TNS). The founder, Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt established a science-based framework to promote sustainable development and environmental stewardship. Rather than getting mired in partisan debates, TNS adopted a novel approach that first identified what the various factions could agree on before tackling specific solutions. This successful program was adopted and promoted to all of Sweden by King Carl Gustaf XVI.
Major corporations demonstrated the power of this consensus-based approach.  IKEA used TNS principles to transform its supply chain and product design, reducing waste while increasing profits. Electrolux redesigned its entire product line based on shared environmental principles, leading to innovative, energy-efficient appliances.  Even McDonalds in Sweden adopted the framework, dramatically reducing its environmental impact while maintaining profitability.
Our democracy needs a parallel reset.

Just as The Natural Step succeeded by focusing on basic agreements about sustainability, we could begin by agreeing on a few basic principles: evidence-based decision-making, respect for expertise in complex systems, and the vital role of reliable journalism.
But as the data and charts illustrate, the challenges to this ideal are formidable.  Our town’s experience reminds us of what democracy can achieve when citizens engage in reasoned dialogue. Whether in a small town or across the nation, society and civilized cultures depend on systems that, while not perfect, work because they are designed to self-correct and improve over time.  Consider these examples:
The scientific method self-corrects through peer review and reproducibility, allowing new discoveries to refine or replace outdated theories.
Democracy self-corrects via the independence of the three branches of government, elections, and judicial reviews, enabling societies to address ineffective governance and unjust laws.
Economic markets self-regulate through supply and demand, encouraging innovation and price adjustments when imbalances occur.
Our town meeting taught us something vital and personal: Democracy has been thriving for 250 years, and throughout history, it works best based on reason, expertise, science, and reliable information.  We can do our part by approaching our responsibilities with curiosity rather than certainty and when we're willing to learn, listen, and be humble enough to change our minds instead of just defending what we think we already know.