Americans are being offered an unpalatable choice between an excessive, elephantine, and paternalistic government and a radically self-absorbed, nearly anarchic private market. No wonder they are outraged at politicians. Yet once upon a time, between the poles of government and market, there was a vast, vital middle ground known as civil society. Although in eclipse today, civil society was the key to America's early democratic energy and civic activism. Its great virtue was that it shared government's regard for the commonweal, yet unlike government made no claim to exercise a monopoly on legitimate coercion.
Civil society is a societal dwelling place that is neither a capitol building nor a shopping mall.
But unlike the private sector, it aims at common ground and consensual, integrative, and collaborative action. Civil society is thus public without being coercive, voluntary without being private. Such daily business includes attending church or synagogue, doing community service, participating in a voluntary or civic association, joining a fraternal organization, contributing to a charity, assuming responsibility in a PTA or a neighborhood watch or a hospital fundraising society. It is in this civil domain that such traditional institutions as foundations, schools, churches, public interest groups, voluntary associations, civic groups, and social movements belong. The media too, when they place their public responsibilities ahead of their commercial ambitions, are better understood as part of civil society and not the private sector.