uva - new age politics - satin - the radical middle

7/30/2019 UVA - New Age Politics - Satin - The Radical Middle

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/uva-new-age-politics-satin-the-radical-middle 1/8

Almanac of Policy IssuesHome : Search

By Leif UtneUtne Magazine: September/October 2004 [ One year, $14.97 ]

They're pragmatic. They're idealistic. And they'rereshaping the future of American politics.

In November 1991, Utne ran a map of the Americanpolitical landscape, in a section exploring whyAmericans hate politics. The map made the point thatthe left-right spectrum we use to define people's politicalviews is out of date and incapable of describing today's

complex, nuanced political realities.

In addition to a liberal versus conservative axis, authors Eric Selbin andRon Steiner added three other polarities -- centralized versusdecentralized, freedom versus order, liberty versus equality -- andscattered the major movements, organizations, and political figures of theday throughout the matrix. For the first time, I had a framework forthinking beyond left and right. I saw that anarchists and Marxists arephilosophically as different from each other as neoconservatives are frompacifist New Agers. It was a glorious mess. It was funny. And it blew my19-year-old political-science-major mind.

Yet something was missing. Selbin and Steiner highlighted the committedspokespeople for various points of view. But advocates for most of America -- the vast, silent middle, who don't identify with any particularideology and approach politics, if at all, with a cautious pragmatism --were nowhere to be seen. There weren't many articulate defenders of apragmatic middle way. More than a decade later, that's changing. -- Leif Utne

You're hearing it everywhere these days. Political commentators acrossthe board are saying that America is not as divided as we thought.Research has shown that on issues ranging from abortion to trade, gun

control to the environment, Americans agree with each other more todaythan they did 20 years ago. It's the politicians and special interests -- andthe media that egg them on -- that are driving the polarization of politicaldebate in this country.

Thanks in large part to that polarization, our political system is sick,dysfunctional, and driving people away. Fully half the electorate doesn'teven bother to vote. Candidates for public office are even trained intechniques to suppress turnout among undecided voters -- some obvious,like running negative attack ads; others beyond the pale, like dressing upvolunteers as police officers and parking them outside polling places in

Also from Utne

Beyond Activistism: WhyWe Need Deeper ThinkingIn Our Protests(November/December2004)Creative Class Brain Drain(September/October 2004)

The Radical Middle(September/October 2004)Increase Your Energy IQ(July/August 2004)The Greening of HealthCare(November/December2002)

Utne Magazine : Utne mixesfresh, off-the-beaten pathoriginal writing with the

most inspiring ideashandpicked from 1,600independent magazinesand books. One year just$14.97 (50% off thenewsstand price).

Subscribe

adical Middle http://www.policyalmanac.org/publications/utne/radical_middle.shtm

6/20/2012 12



poor neighborhoods to intimidate minority voters. Problems facing thecountry are mounting, from decaying schools to global terror, yet thewarring camps in charge keep bickering over whose silent majority isbigger. It's as if the parents are standing on the shore fighting over whichway to row the boat while the kids are drowning in the middle of the lake.

Yet there are real signs of hope. More and more people fed up withpartisan gridlock are not responding with cynicism and inaction; rather,they're rolling up their sleeves and coming together across ideologicallines, building unlikely coalitions and moving toward solutions toseemingly intractable problems that don't easily fit the tired old left-rightparadigm -- like the global AIDS crisis, energy independence, education,poverty, middle-class decline, campaign finance, globalization, theburgeoning prison population, and climate change. This "radical middle" isnot about cynical, poll-driven attempts to find the mushy political center.It's about people who have stepped outside old ideological boxes to fightboldly for the common good.

Here is a look at a few of the remarkable thinkers and doers who areshaping this new radical-middle politics. Some of them focus on policy,proposing new solutions that a majority of Americans could get behindand advocating these measures in the marketplace of ideas via newsletters,reports, books and magazine articles, talk shows, and lobbying. Othersfocus on process, designing new ways of doing democracy that heal thewounds of political division in the body politic and tap into our collectivewisdom by bringing many voices into dialogue. Still others are goingoutside the political process altogether, creating innovative projects thatinvolve citizens directly in creating solutions. The common thread unitingall of these people is a belief that our political system is seriously flawedand that the answers lie beyond blind adherence to old orthodoxies.

Mark Satin Creating a Pragmatic New Politics

The long and winding political career of Mark Satin has taken some oddturns. Starting as a '60s campus radical, he became the guru of a New Agepolitics based on personal transformation in the '80s and a corporatelawyer in the '90s. Satin now edits and publishes the Radical MiddleNewsletter (www.radicalmiddle.com), dedicated to crafting a new politicalsynthesis that listens to, and draws the best ideas from, both left and right."The left has taught us to care for everyone, not just the middle and upperclasses," he says. "The right has taught us the value of personalachievement." He has distilled his thinking down to four guidingprinciples: Maximize choices for all; give everyone a fair start; maximizehuman potential; help the developing world.

In his new book, Radical Middle: The Politics We Need Now (Westview,2004), which provided the initial inspiration for this article, Satin fleshesout pragmatic new policy ideas that stem from those principles, likeinstituting universal health coverage that is private and preventive,endowing every newborn with a financial nest egg, and launching amassive new energy research program that gives equal weight to


6/20/2012 12



conservation, renewable energy sources, fossil fuels, hydrogen, nuclearpower (yes, nuclear), biofuels, and lifestyle changes. He is quick to stressthat he doesn't necessarily have the right answers, and that his proposalsare merely opening salvos in an ongoing debate over what constitutesradical-middle solutions.

Satin draws inspiration from nonpolitical realms of society where peopleare blending what works from various orthodoxies. He points todevelopments like integrative medicine, in which techniques likehomeopathy and acupuncture meet conventional Western medicine;socially responsible business, where ecology and social justice combinewith economics; and judges' increasing use of psychology, economics, andeven literature in crafting legal opinions. "Politics," he says ruefully, "isthe last area of society where this kind of creative thinking is taking hold."

Laura Chasin Healing Through Conversation

One day in 1989, as Laura Chasin watched an abortion debate on Bostonpublic television, it hit her that the debaters were acting like adysfunctional family, demonizing each other and screaming as if the onlyway to win were to raise their voices louder and louder. "My familytherapy head and my citizen head connected," said Chasin, who studiedpolitical science before becoming a therapist. She realized that a familytherapy approach might help to create respectful dialogue aboutcontentious public issues. The Public Conversations Project(www.publicconversations.org) was born.

PCP's first project brought together leaders from both sides of the abortiondebate for a series of dialogues. One key, Chasin says, is not to strive for"common ground"; PCP focuses on getting participants to simply listen toeach other and see each other as human beings. It may seemcounterintuitive, "but after three hours of dialogue, at least the outline of what some would call common ground begins to emerge," she says.

Chasin was surprised by the success of those early dialogues and has seensimilar results many times over in conversations on all sorts of issues. Innorthern New England, where industry and environmentalists weredeadlocked in a debate over plans to protect the region's pristine northernforest, PCP led a private dialogue process parallel to the publicnegotiations. "The people involved in the private process started behavingdifferently in the public process," Chasin says. "Instead of attacking eachother in the press, they would call each other on the phone." Eventually,they succeeded in negotiating a plan all sides could agree to. But PCP'sdialogues are not intended to push public policy or move disputing partiestoward collaboration. "The more you push for an agreement on outcomes,the less you tend to get it," she says. "But if you shift the relationships,often they will move spontaneously toward collaboration on solutions."

Ted Halstead Writing A New Social Contract

"The polarization of the two-party cartel gives the broad public, in effect,


6/20/2012 12



no choice," says Ted Halstead, co-author of The Radical Center(Doubleday, 2001). What voters are seeking instead, he argues, are newchoices and new ways of doing democracy that give them a voice in thegoverning process. "The defining features of the information age," he says,"are flexibility and choice" in most realms of life -- travel, food, schools,consumer products -- but not in politics. At the same time, increasedchoice for some is running up against the American tradition of fairness,resulting in greater poverty and inequality -- that is, fewer choices for thepoor. The political parties, he says, are fundamentally trapped in theeither-or, us-versus-them thinking of the past. "We need a new socialcontract worthy of the 21st century that gives us both flexibility andfairness," he says.

Massive social changes and political realignments are needed, Halsteadthinks, and they tend to happen under certain social and politicalconditions: rapid technological change, war, shifting demographics,economic inequality, and weakening and shifting allegiances to politicalparties. "All of these factors are aligning now," observes the one-timeenvironmental activist, who founded his first think tank, RedefiningProgress, at age 24. "In the near future we'll see a radical shift inAmerican politics."

Halstead and his staff at the New America Foundation(www.newamerica.net), a Washington think tank for people he calls the"ideologically homeless," search for innovative policy ideas that drawfrom a variety of political traditions -- like portable health insurance thatstays with individuals no matter where they work, or instant runoff voting,which gives voters more choices by letting them rank candidates in orderof preference. "The radical center is about openness to rethinking basicprinciples," he says. "What makes this radical is not that it's extreme butthat it goes to the 'radix' or the 'root.'"

Tom Atlee Designing a Wiser Democracy

Ayn Rand once wrote that "there is no such thing as a collective brain."Go by images from popular culture -- like the Borg Collective from StarTrek: The Next Generation, a race of parasites dependent on a totalitarian"group mind" -- and that might strike you as a good thing. But, accordingto Tom Atlee, there is such a thing as co-intelligence -- and, he says, itcould revive our democracy.

Polarization is an inherent flaw in our current system of representativegovernment, says Atlee, president of the Co-Intelligence Institute(www.co-intelligence.org). "Majority rule forces us to be adversarial. Itdoesn't matter if you're recommending clean air, you're a special interest."Debate is the standard model we use for political discussion, with animplied winner and loser. The deliberative processes he advocates, on theother hand, help participants to step into a different mind-set in whichthey tap into a cooperative sense of "we the people" and pool theirindividual smarts to produce collective insights. "This is what the framersof the Constitution intended Congress to be," Atlee says.


6/20/2012 12



daughters' education by involving them in the governance of their schools."The most important factor in educating girls is parental 'ownership' of theschools," he says. "And when you educate girls, you empower women."Within three years, he hopes to expand the program to some 15,000schools in India. Meanwhile, he is working with colleagues to bring asimilar model into the San Francisco public schools.

Joel Kramer Pushing for Economic Growth and Justice

"What if I could prove to you somehow that school vouchers were thebest approach to giving every kid in Minnesota a quality education?Would you still oppose them?" That's the question Joel Kramer posed at arecent breakfast meeting of Minnesota Democratic activists. The formerpublisher of the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper, a self-describedliberal, says he doesn't necessarily believe vouchers are the answer to oureducation woes, but he revels in asking questions that challenge a group'sorthodox beliefs. And he's not afraid to ask similarly challenging questionsamong conservatives. "Nobody has a monopoly on the truth," he says.

In late 2002 Kramer founded a group called Growth and Justice(www.growthandjustice.org) -- part of a wave of new local and regionalprogressive think tanks across the United States -- dedicated to the ideathat Minnesota can have an economy that is prosperous, fair, andecologically sustainable. But this is no ordinary think tank. Rather thanstarting with an economic theory, writing a report, and walking the halls of the state legislature, Kramer hit the road, convening roundtablediscussions with locals in cities and towns across the state, includingpublic employees, academics, politicians, and business leaders. He askedthem one question: "What can we do to ensure that working people inMinnesota can provide for themselves and their families?" After ninemonths and hundreds of conversations with people from across thepolitical spectrum, Kramer and his team published a report that proposed abold legislative program for improving workforce education and skillstraining.

Growth and Justice has received praise from nearly every quarter. But,ironically, as in many states, partisan bickering over gay marriage andother issues brought this year's Minnesota legislative session to a standstill,effectively killing nearly all new proposals, Kramer's included.

Shirley Wilcher Celebrating Diversity

If we don't counteract the polarization we see in America today, warnsShirley Wilcher, "my fear is that we could end up with a South Africa kindof scenario, where only a small minority leads, and they're mostly fromone race." A corporate diversity consultant, former Labor Departmentofficial under the Clinton administration, and founding member of theNational Congress of Black Women, Wilcher is a tireless advocate foraffirmative action. Yet she rejects being characterized as a liberal. "I think personal responsibility and government intervention can both beappropriate" responses to racial disparity, she says. "My eye remains on


6/20/2012 12



25 years from now when the Supreme Court says affirmative actionshould no longer be necessary, and I will sit down today with whomever tofind solutions." In her many op-ed pieces and letters to editors, Wilcherattempts to shift the focus of the affirmative action debate from racialquotas to the need to fix inequities in the K-12 education system,problems that, she says, create the need for affirmative action later on incolleges and workplaces. The daughter of jazz musicians, Wilcher sees themixing of cultures and traditions in popular music as a sign that Americanscan overcome our differences. "If there's one sign that we in America willbe one America, it's in our music. Today you see white kids doing hip-hop.Fifty years ago, you didn't see that kind of blending."

Joseph McCormick Retracing de Tocqueville's steps

Joseph McCormick ran for Congress "as a hard-right Christian" in JimmyCarter's old district in Plains, Georgia, in 1998. He had been a Republicanactivist for a decade, but during that campaign, he saw a side of nationalpolitics, and himself, that he didn't like. He found himself raising moneyfrom anyone who would give it and felt beholden to a range of interestgroups he didn't really agree with. After losing the race, McCormick retreated, spending a year in a cabin on a mountainside in southwesternVirginia questioning the status of American democracy.

He read the works of political thinkers throughout American history, fromAlexander Hamilton and James Madison to Noam Chomsky, and he foundhimself falling in love again with the dream that the founding documentsof this country brought into being. Inspired by Alexis de Tocqueville, heand partner Pat Spino founded the Democracy in America Project,dedicated to building bridges across the political divisions that polarize andseparate Americans, and seeking out models for doing democracy better.They traveled the country throughout 2003, filming interviews with morethan 30 modern political philosophers and activists, including Ross Perot,Tom Atlee, Ralph Nader, and David Keene, president of the AmericanConservative Union, for use in a future documentary.

Now McCormick and Spino are the driving force behind the upcoming Wethe People national convention (www.democracycampaign.org) inSpringfield, Illinois, which will bring together hundreds of people for across-spectrum dialogue about national priorities in late September (seesidebar, p. 84).

Carl Fillichio Seeing Homeland Security from the Citizen'sPerspective

The polarization of political debate is largely the media's fault, says CarlFillichio, vice president for innovation and public engagement at theCouncil for Excellence in Government (www.excelgov.org). According toa 2003 CEG study, media portrayals of government are not biased to theleft or right, but to the negative, since the press thrives on controversy."Because television, particularly cable, is point-counterpoint, it facilitatesscreaming," Fillichio says. "It doesn't make good TV if we agree." The


6/20/2012 12



study showed that the "news hole" -- the time left in a half-hour broadcastafter you subtract the ads -- has shrunk dramatically. In 1981 the averagewas 22 minutes and 22 seconds; in 2001 it was 18 minutes and 37seconds. "That puts tremendous pressure on producers to definearguments quickly -- 'the left thinks this and the right thinks that' --because the nuance of middle ground is too complicated."

A former Labor Department spokesman who helped shut down KathieLee Gifford's Asian sweatshops in the mid-'90s, Fillichio put his mediasavvy to good use in his latest project, a set of 50 recommendations forimproving homeland security, compiled through an innovative publicdialogue process. CEG staged seven town-hall meetings from Miami toSan Diego, inviting thousands of citizens to speak directly with federal,state, and local officials about their ideas for making the country safer. "InSt. Louis, we had the Democratic mayor and [Republican] homelandsecurity secretary Tom Ridge on the panel together, not disagreeing witheach other, not speechifying, but listening to the citizens of the city." And,Fillichio says, it actually made good television "because real people wereinvolved." Two local stations bumped their daytime soap operas andcovered the forum live, gavel to gavel.

Leif Utne is associate editor of Utne.

This sample article provided by Utne magazine. Utne mixes fresh, off-the- beaten path original writing with the most inspiring ideas handpicked from 1,600 independent magazines and books. One Year just $14.97 (50% off the newsstand price).

Back to the Almanac of Policy Issues


uva - new age politics - satin - the radical middle

Documents