In my irrational exuberance upon discovering a profound progressive vision for America, I skipped a couple of important steps in laying the groundwork to make that vision coherent. Allow me to begin at the beginning.
Preface
Alperovitz tells the story of "Black Monday", a failed effort by Youngstown steelworkers to rescue a mill that was going to close, by owning and running the mill themselves. Then he gets serious.
This book argues that the only way for the United States to once again honor its great historic values - above all equality, liberty, and meaningful democracy - is to build forward to achieve what amounts to systemic change. I shall explain what I mean in due course, but here let me note that fundamental change - indeed, radical systemic change --- is as common as grass in world history. It may be that history has stopped in the United States circa 2004, but I doubt it. The lessons of Youngstown have been reiniforced by the experiences I have cited - above all, that what seems radical is often common sense at the grassroots level and that a commitment to the long haul is the only way to test what might really be possible.
(after you finish reading my diary, click on the following link to the Russell Kirk Center and spend a few minutes examining what genuine conservative philosophy used to represent, before the pale shadows of George Bush and Karl Rove twisted it into the farcical caricature it has become.)
One other lesson is important: serious ideas count. Moreover, people understand and respect serious ideas. Here I again honor committed, thoughtful conservatives (as distinct from right-wing ideologues who use ideas to bludgeon the opposition). Though I disagree with the writings of men like
Russell Kirk, Henry C. Simons, and Fredrich A. Hayek, I respect their commitment to developing tough-minded theory - and their understanding that this is critical to the development of a truly meaningfull politics.
Thinking, or not thinking, of an elephant is not sufficient.
We often ignore this truth, thinking that what counts is "the message" or "how issues are framed" for public consumption. What ultimately counts is a coherent and powerful understanding of what makes sense, and why - and how what makes sense can be achieved in the real world. By "coherent" I mean rigorous intellectually as well as politically.
That's a process we can only start here, and elsewhere on the blogosphere. The real serious work of taking an idea from creative germ to full fledged operational legislation requires serious resources that only a think tank can provide. But by golly, we can sure have fun getting ideas off the ground.
Some feel that ordinary Americans are uninterested in ideas or cannot understand them. I disagree. Historically it is not only thoughtful conservatives who have shown that ideas count but, in other eras and other times - whether one agrees or disagree - Marxists and liberation theologians as well. And Americans at the time of the Revolution. And feminist theorists from Seneca Falls on. The lesson here is that it is time to roll up our sleeves and get serious about the intellectual work that needs to be done if an effort to achieve fundamental change is ever to succeed. We need to ask ourselves the following questions:
If the current political-economic system is no longer able to sustain equality, liberty, and meaningful democracy, what specifically do we want? And why, specifically, should anyone expect what we want to be any better than what we now have? And how, specifically, might what we propose deal with the everyday problems now facing most Americans? And finally, even if we can say what "system" would be better, why, specifically, do wee think it might be attainable in the real world? As I said, I am no utopian. Why in the world should anybody want to support a movement for serious change that does not attempt to give straight and tough answers to such obvious questions? My book, I hope, will helpstimulate more tough-minded discussion of such matters.
Alperovitz knows that he has not offered a final solution to our political and economic problems. He has provided a progressive framework to push a grand political vision into the political mainstream. Two jacket-cover endorsements on the back are from William Greider, author of The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy and Jeremy Rifkin, author of The End of Work.
Although this book is not explicitly about the war in Iraq (or the war on terrorism), I also hope it will help us reach to some of the underlying structural relationships - and issues of democratic decision makikng - that have allowed the overmilitarization of U.S. foreign policy. I have previously written a great deal on foreign policy and military matters. This work attempts to go deepter - to the structural foundations of the system that permit the kinds of policies that so endanger the modern world.
Alperovitz knows that his book is only a small beginning. The next paragraph suggests a great reawakening of the national dialogue comparable to the early debates held by our founding fathers. A debate that I firmly believe has already begun here at MyDD and Dkos.
Quite apart from any particular book, I believe there is a real hunger for new thinking among many Americans. Indeed, it would not surprise me - given the growing pain and frustration - if in the coming decades, we were to experience something like the Federalist debates of the founding era - a time of great and historic public rethinking of fundamentals. It may well be that the intellectual (as well as political) debates that antiglobalization activists have helped initiate are the opening guns in such a national dialogue.
How cool is that? Are Jerome, Chris and Kos the Founding Fathers for a new great debate?
The question is not the capacity of citizens to understand. It is not even whether writers and thinkers take the time to explain themselves. What opens people to making the effort is that they are forced to abandon the pose that politics doesn't matter, and that ideas are irrelevant.
The problem with the Democratic party is not that there is not a moral liberal vision to counter Bush's mean spirited, dog eat dog Selfishness Society. The vision is out there, it has just not been articulated. We have a unique opportunity here at MyDD to help form, articulate and propagate that vision. As Paul Rosenberg has repeated in his diaries about the history of liberalism, liberalism is a continuing dialogue that communicates pragmatic solutions to societal problems only as well as it provides solutions for day to day problems of individual citizens.
Let the dialogue continue.
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