Epilogue: The Jeremiad, the Myth of America, and the New Covenant

Abstract

A new generation of writers, thinkers, public figures, and citizens plays a leading role in modernizing the New Covenant in the current engagement with authoritarianism. This current generation demonstrates the relevance and viability of a dynamic New Covenant in the campaign for democracy and in the struggle for awakening and strengthening the American soul. It follows in the footsteps of Jewish figures and leaders in the New Covenant who were prominent in campaigns for democracy dating from the late nineteenth century. Like earlier generations in the New Covenant, today’s writers and thinkers develop the discourse about American democracy and tend to think of the American Idea and Creed in terms of the American Jeremiad. Their work promulgates Bercovitch’s theory of the American Jeremiad as the key to the myth and ideology of America. These New Jeremiahs such as Thomas Friedman, David Brooks, Brett Stephens, Michelle Goldberg, Jennifer Weiner, David Remnick, Jeffrey Goldberg, among many others, appear in major journals and publications such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker. Authors such as Anne Applebaum, Masha Gessen, David Frum, Yascha Mounk, among many others, have become prominent for the central role of their books and their commentary in the media in shaping and directing public discourse and intellectual debate about democracy and antiauthoritarianism.