Homer is a moral metaphor for a familiar kind of American: one who builds, listens, mends, and believes. He is grounded in vocation rather than ideology, attentive to people rather than platforms, belonging to a tradition that understands democracy not as performance but as practice. He lives somewhere between a shuttered factory and a church that still rings its bell every Sunday morning, in the quieter geography of the American republic, where ordinary people continue to carry the weight of democracy without asking for applause.
The Center Still Waiting
“The people have the power to redeem the work of fools.”
— Carl Sandburg, The People, Yes
Dear Family & Friends,
The older I become, the less interested I am in ideological certainty. Governing from the center with a pragmatic spirit that honors the classical liberalism and democratic principles of the founders and the moral inheritance of the Enlightenment remains, to me, one of the deepest strengths of American democracy.
I have watched too many movements harden into the very things they once claimed to oppose. Too many leaders become captive to applause. Too many institutions lose their moral bearings because they stopped listening long before they stopped speaking.
And yet, beneath all the noise now consuming American public life, I still believe most people remain far more reasonable than the systems surrounding them.
Most Americans are not extremists.
Most are trying to live decent lives in an age that profits from agitation.
They are raising children, paying bills, helping aging parents, mourning losses, sitting in traffic, praying quietly, and wondering how the world became so loud. They are not spending their evenings constructing ideological manifestos. They are trying to preserve some measure of dignity and steadiness while history itself seems to accelerate around them.
What many of them appear to want from the Democratic Party is not ideological revolution, but something older and more grounded: a judicious liberalism that still believes in freedom, fairness, constitutional order, pluralism, and democratic responsibility — without drifting into the language of cultural absolutism or permanent social warfare.
That distinction matters more than many political operatives understand.
What is often overlooked in the current political atmosphere is that the Democratic Party still possesses a significant bench of experienced, pragmatic leaders who are not primarily charismatic populists or ideological firebrands. They tend instead toward governance, institutional stability, economic pragmatism, coalition-building, and democratic stewardship.
This quieter bench strength reflects an older American liberal tradition — one less interested in political theater than in administrative competence, civic repair, infrastructure, healthcare, labor stability, democratic norms, and long-term governing responsibility.
Perhaps that is why so many Americans continue to search not for spectacle but for steadiness. Not for ideological purification, but for civic adulthood. Not for permanent outrage, but for leaders capable of holding together a large, diverse, complicated republic without tearing it apart in the process.
In the end, the survival of democratic life may depend less upon ideological victory than upon whether we still remember how to remain neighbors.
The Difference Between Reform and Righteousness
There was once a kind of American liberalism that carried within it a deep civic humility.
It is believed that the government could help widen opportunities without imagining that it could perfect human nature. It believed in labor, public education, infrastructure, civil rights, scientific inquiry, and democratic institutions, while recognizing that societies remain fragile things requiring trust, restraint, and moral balance.
It was reform-minded without becoming doctrinaire.
It understood that people are rarely reducible to categories.
That human beings carry contradictions within themselves.
That mercy matters as much as justice.
The problem emerging now is not that Americans oppose fairness or inclusion. Most do not. The problem is that parts of modern political culture increasingly speak in tones of moral accusation rather than in the language of democratic persuasion.
There is a difference between asking citizens to widen the circle of human dignity and asking them to live under perpetual ideological examination.
Most people can feel the difference instinctively.
The first invites participation.
The second produces resentment, fear, silence, and eventually backlash.
The Country Beyond the Algorithm
One of the great illusions of our age is that social media represents America itself.
It does not.
The country that exists online is often a distorted hall of mirrors where outrage rises to the surface because outrage generates profit, attention, and political energy. The loudest voices become the defining voices precisely because they provoke emotional reaction.
But that is not the whole country.
The real country still exists in quieter places.
In churches serving food after floods.
In nurses working double shifts without asking who voted for whom.
In public school teachers buying supplies with their own money.
In veterans gathering at diners before sunrise.
In immigrants opening small businesses.
In grandparents raising grandchildren.
In neighbors helping each other after hurricanes tear roofs
from homes along the Gulf Coast.
America survives because millions of ordinary people continue practicing forms of civic decency the internet rarely notices. And many of those people increasingly feel politically estranged from the ideological extremes pulling at both parties.
They do not want cruelty from the populist right. But neither do they want a progressive politics that sometimes appears unable to distinguish between democratic disagreement and moral heresy.
They want seriousness.
Competence.
Fairness.
Restraint.
A politics that still believes citizens with different beliefs can live together in the same republic.
The Fragility of Democratic Trust
What concerns me most is not disagreement itself.
Democracy has always involved disagreement.
What concerns me is the erosion of trust beneath the disagreement.
A republic cannot survive indefinitely once citizens begin seeing one another primarily as enemies rather than neighbors. Once every election becomes apocalyptic. Once every compromise becomes betrayal. Once every institution becomes illegitimate whenever it fails to produce our preferred outcome.
Fear then becomes the central organizing principle of political life.
And fear is a dangerous architect.
Fear can convince nations to surrender freedoms in exchange for emotional reassurance. It can radicalize movements. It can tempt political parties into speaking only to their most agitated factions while abandoning the broader civic middle that actually sustains democratic stability.
Much of what Americans appear to long for now is not ideological purity, but equilibrium.
A recovery of proportion. A recovery of civic adulthood.
What the Democratic Party Must Remember
If the Democratic Party wishes to remain a governing coalition rather than simply an activist coalition, it must remember something fundamental about the American temperament.
Americans generally prefer aspiration to condemnation. They respond better to the widening of opportunity than to the language of punishment. Better a civic invitation than moral humiliation.
Most citizens are willing to support fairness when fairness feels connected to a shared national purpose. They become more resistant when politics begins sounding like a graduate seminar conducted entirely in the dialect of accusation.
The country is more culturally complicated than ideological movements often allow.
It contains immigrants and ranchers, union workers and entrepreneurs, secular progressives and churchgoing moderates, urban professionals and rural families, all trying to coexist inside the same democratic experiment.
No lasting political future can be built by treating large portions of the population as morally disposable. The wiser path forward may require something far less glamorous than ideological performance.
Humility.
Patience.
Listening.
The difficult discipline of persuasion.
The Center Still Waiting
I suspect the center of American life still exists, though it has become quieter and less visible beneath the noise machines surrounding modern politics.
It exists among people who still believe democracy requires both liberty and responsibility.
Who believe fairness matters, but so does social trust.
Who believe institutions must be reformed, not burned down.
Who believe patriotism and self-criticism are not opposites.
Who understand that freedom without moral imagination becomes selfishness, while moral certainty without humility becomes coercion.
These Americans are not asking for perfection.
They are asking for sanity.
For steadiness.
For leaders capable of speaking in complete sentences again, rather than ideological fragments designed for algorithms and applause.
They are asking, perhaps more than anything else, whether we still remember how to remain neighbors.
That question may determine the future of the republic more than any election ever will.
—Homer
The Politics of Competence
The Quiet Center of the Democratic Party
What is often overlooked in the current political atmosphere is that the Democratic Party has a significant bench of experienced, pragmatic leaders who are not primarily charismatic populists or ideological firebrands. They tend instead toward governance, institutional stability, economic pragmatism, coalition-building, and democratic stewardship.
This emerging bench strength reflects a quieter tradition within American liberalism — one less interested in political performance and more focused on administrative competence, civic repair, infrastructure, healthcare, labor stability, democratic norms, and long-term governing responsibility.
Among the more established and nationally recognized figures are:
Gretchen Whitmer — Michigan
A disciplined Midwestern executive focused on manufacturing, labor, infrastructure, and practical governance.Josh Shapiro — Pennsylvania
Widely regarded as an effective institutional leader with crossover appeal among moderates, labor voters, and suburban constituencies.Andy Beshear — Kentucky
A calm, empathetic Southern Democrat whose bipartisan approach has succeeded in a heavily conservative state.Jared Polis — Colorado
A market-friendly, innovation-oriented Democrat balancing social liberalism with technocratic pragmatism.Wes Moore — Maryland
A younger leader emphasizing civic responsibility, opportunity, veterans’ issues, and institutional trust.Raphael Warnock — Georgia
Combines moral seriousness and pastoral rhetoric with an emphasis on democracy, voting rights, and economic dignity.Mark Kelly — Arizona
Former astronaut and Navy veteran known for moderation, border realism, and technocratic steadiness.Amy Klobuchar — Minnesota
A practical legislator focused on infrastructure, antitrust policy, agriculture, and bipartisan problem-solving.Chris Murphy — Connecticut
Increasingly influential as a thoughtful voice on democratic trust, social cohesion, mental health, and institutional repair.Pete Buttigieg — Indiana / Michigan
An articulate communicator who frames Democratic priorities through civic language rather than ideological confrontation.
Alongside them is an emerging generation of younger Democratic leaders who appear less shaped by the activist politics of social media and more by the realities of governance, demographic change, technological transition, and institutional repair:
Elissa Slotkin — Michigan
Former CIA officer and national security pragmatist known for moderation, institutional seriousness, and appeal to independents.Mikie Sherrill — New Jersey
Former Navy helicopter pilot emphasizing public service, national security, suburban coalition politics, and pragmatic governance.Jason Crow — Colorado
Former Army Ranger focused on institutional trust, veterans’ issues, democratic norms, and practical problem-solving.Ro Khanna — California
Represents a technologically literate economic progressivism that often emphasizes innovation, industrial policy, and American competitiveness.Ritchie Torres — New York
A younger urban Democrat balancing liberal social policy with strong institutional and public safety concerns.Marie Gluesenkamp Perez — Washington
A working-class oriented Democrat emphasizing skilled labor, rural communities, trade education, and practical economic concerns.Abigail Spanberger — Virginia
Former CIA officer associated with moderation, fiscal restraint, national security seriousness, and pragmatic coalition-building.Joe Neguse — Colorado
A younger institutional Democrat focused on constitutional governance, public lands, and democratic stability.Jake Auchincloss — Massachusetts
Represents a technocratic and policy-oriented Democratic style focused on energy, infrastructure, and economic modernization.
Together, these figures suggest that the Democratic Party’s deeper bench may be less revolutionary than restorative — less populist than managerial, less ideological than institutional. Their collective appeal rests not primarily on charisma, but on steadiness, competence, moderation, and the belief that democratic governance itself remains worthy of repair and preservation.
In many ways, they represent a quieter political tradition within American life: leaders who still believe the work of democracy is not performance, but stewardship.
About ~ On Being American: Letters from Homer
On Being American: Letters from Homer is an ongoing series written in the voice of “Homer,” a plainspoken, thoughtful American observer. These letters speak directly to friends and neighbors about the pressing issues of our time—politics, economics, faith, and the everyday choices that shape our nation’s future.
The series was inspired by The American Revolution (Ken Burns) and serves as a meditation on the unfinished work of making this republic—still—more whole.
Homer Atkins is a moral metaphor for a familiar kind of American: one who builds, listens, mends, and believes. As a literary voice, he is grounded in vocation rather than ideology, attentive to people rather than platforms. He belongs to a tradition that understands democracy not as a performance, but as a practice—lived through acts of neighborliness, mercy, patience, and presence.
First imagined in The Ugly American by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick as a humble engineer who lived among the people he served, this Homer has come home. He now lives in a small town not listed on most maps—somewhere between a shuttered factory and a church that still rings its bell every Sunday.
He speaks for Americans who dream not of dominion, but of democracy; not of noise, but of repair. He believes greatness is not something a nation declares, but something it practices—quietly, imperfectly—through honest work, mutual care, and attention to what endures.
These essays are his letters: written from the porch, from the workshop, from the quiet places where democracy is still being lived—not as spectacle, but as vocation.
Ron Starbuck
Publisher, Saint Julian Press, Inc.
Houston, Texas
On Being American: Letters from Homer.
© 2026 Saint Julian Press.
Suggested Reading
The Vital Center — Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949.
A classic defense of democratic liberalism written in the aftermath of fascism and the rise of totalitarian ideologies, arguing for a politics rooted in balance, democratic responsibility, and institutional stability.The Fractured Republic — Levin, Yuval. The Fractured Republic: Renewing America’s Social Contract in the Age of Individualism. New York: Basic Books, 2016.
A thoughtful meditation on institutional decline, cultural fragmentation, and the challenge of rebuilding a shared civic life in modern America.The Fire Next Time — Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. New York: Dial Press, 1963. Baldwin’s enduring essays explore race, conscience, religion, and the moral contradictions at the center of the American experience.
The Human Condition — Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. A profound philosophical reflection on public life, responsibility, labor, action, and the fragile architecture of democratic society.
A Testament of Hope — King Jr., Martin Luther, ed. James Melvin Washington. A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986. A sweeping collection of King’s sermons, speeches, and essays revealing his vision of justice, beloved community, and democratic moral imagination.
I and Thou — Buber, Martin. I and Thou. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Scribner, 1970. A foundational work of relational philosophy emphasizing dialogue, encounter, and the sacred dignity of human beings beyond ideology.
Democracy in America — Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. One of the most penetrating examinations ever written on American democracy, equality, religion, civic life, and the tensions inherent in freedom itself.