Purpose: This activity asks you to analyze how historians and journalists document moments of democratic crisis. Rather than debating opinions, you will examine evidence, norms, and memory using an archive of recent events.
📚 Picking Up from Where We Left Off
Last time, we spent time doing something that doesn't always feel like "real history" at first: we worked through disagreement. You weren't memorizing facts. You were asked to deal with incomplete evidence, conflicting perspectives, and uncertainty—and to do that using shared methods.
Now, we're taking the next step. We're going to look more closely at the shared expectations that made yesterday's disagreement manageable—and what happens when those expectations weaken.
Those expectations are what we call democratic norms.
🔍 From Historical Skills to Norms
Yesterday, you used sourcing, contextualization, and corroboration to make sense of the lunchroom fight. But notice something important:
Those skills only worked because everyone in your group accepted certain basic conditions:
- That evidence mattered
- That perspectives could be questioned without being dismissed
- That disagreement didn't mean bad faith
- That the goal wasn't winning, but understanding what most likely happened
Those are not technical skills. Those are norms.
Norms are shared expectations about behavior. They're not laws. They're not written down. They're rarely enforced formally. But without them, disagreement stops being productive. In other words, historical skills depend on norms just as much as societies do.
📜 The Bill of Obligations
What Democracy Requires of Its Citizens
The Bill of Obligations is a framework proposed by Richard Haass to complement the Constitution's focus on rights. While the Constitution tells us what the government must not do to us, the Bill of Obligations asks what we must do for democracy to survive.
Core idea: Rights alone do not sustain democracy. Democracy endures only when citizens actively practice certain norms and behaviors. Unlike laws, obligations are voluntary—they are not enforced by courts or police, but by culture, education, and civic expectations.
Rights vs. Obligations
| Rights | Obligations (norms) |
|---|---|
| Legally protected | Morally and civically expected |
| Enforced by courts | Sustained by citizens |
| Focus on individual freedom | Focus on democratic survival |
| Can exist on paper | Must be practiced daily |
The Ten Obligations:
- Be Informed — Seek accurate information and resist misinformation
- Get Involved — Democracy requires participation, not spectatorship
- Be Open to Compromise — No group gets everything it wants
- Remain Civil — Disagree without dehumanizing opponents
- Reject Violence — Political change must occur through peaceful means
- Value Norms — Respect unwritten rules like accepting election results
- Promote the Common Good — Balance personal freedom with concern for others
- Respect Government Service — Distinguish criticism from delegitimizing institutions
- Support the Teaching of Civics — Democratic knowledge must be passed on
- Put Country First — Place democratic institutions above party loyalty
⚠️ IMPORTANT: Read Your Chapter on "Value Norms"
Before completing this worksheet, make sure you have read the chapter on "Value Norms" from your assigned reading.
This obligation is especially relevant to today's activity because democracy depends as much on norms as on laws. Norms are the unwritten rules—like accepting election results and peaceful transitions of power—that hold democratic systems together.
Historical context: Norm violations often precede democratic collapse more than formal constitutional changes. That's why understanding how norms work—and how they break down—is critical to understanding both history and current events.
📂 Why Archives Matter
An archive is not just a storage space. It's a structured collection of evidence meant to preserve a record that can be revisited, challenged, and reinterpreted over time.
Archives matter because they:
- Slow down disagreement
- Replace immediacy with documentation
- Create a shared factual baseline
- Make accountability possible without violence
Importantly, archives don't eliminate disagreement. They make it manageable. They don't tell us what to think. They preserve what we need in order to argue responsibly. That makes archives a crucial part of how societies deal with moments of stress.
I Understanding the Archive
II Close Analysis of One Source
Choose one specific item from the archive (a video, document, image, or testimony).