In this article, the author argues that true knowledge of democracy requires learning about the values of diversity and dissent. The American brand of democratic ideology has inspired numerous movements for inclusion through the securing of rights and opportunities for marginalized populations. Multicultural education is a recent historical movement that follows the same path of inclusion--sustaining the values of diversity and dissent in American democracy. The author therefore argues that multicultural education provides the rare opportunity to practice and experience this unique form of American democracy by explicitly striving for the diversity of perspectives and dissent from domination. As an example of teaching democracy through diversity and dissent, he discusses the critical pedagogy of the Social Justice Education Project (SJEP), a multicultural curriculum he helped to design for the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD). While this curriculum meets the senior-year government requirements for graduation, it also supplements U.S. government content with non-traditional social and cultural theory and methods, including critical race theory, critical pedagogy, and participatory action research. (Contains 4 footnotes.)