The Real State of the Union, again



My friend Mark Satin has a wonderful writeup of the NAF's Real State of the Union conference, done in conjunction with The Atlantic Monthly (who previously sponsored both an issue and a book with that name). Some key insights:

We're much less divided than we (and the media) think:
"As a result, there’s no majority party in the U.S. today, and the first party that embraces the center -- truly speaks to the center, which does not consist of dullards and mealy-mouths but is full of imagination and angst -- will be the majority party in the U.S. for a long time to come."

There's radical middle alternatives to simply privatizing Social Security
"didn’t do what many Democrats are doing these days and disparage President Bush’s concept of the 'Ownership Society.' Instead, he did the radical middle thing. He embraced the positive core of the concept and said, Let’s figure out how to make this work for all Americans . . . and especially for those of us who own few or no assets. His concern for the asset-poor had nothing to do with guilt-ridden, limousine liberalism. It was hard as nails. It had the good of the entire society in mind."

along with individual-mandates for health care and skill-side investment in children, paid for by a responsible progressive consumption tax plus impact-based taxation:
"We should start taxing “more of what we want less of,” such as pollution and use of non-renewable resources, rather than “more of what we want more of,” such as wages and capital gains."

And for a light lunch, Richard Clarke laid out "a full-blown, long-term strategy for coping with terrorism."
'Long term, our most essential task is to persuade the people in the second and third circles that Jihad is self-defeating and that there’s a better way to achieve social justice, which we can help them achieve. In other words, we need to engage in a “battle of ideas” against the Jihadists -- and it’s one we dare not lose. But battling over ideas is only half the task, Clarke said.  He is a radical centrist, which means he’s equally committed to achieving homeland security directly -- by reducing domestic vulnerabilities (e.g., of our chemical plants), by capacity building (e.g., devising a rational formula for dividing homeland security funds among the states), and by thinking carefully about civil liberties.'

And to cap it all off, a rethinking of foreign policy:
'Militarily, this may be a “unipolar” world, he said. But economically and diplomatically, it’s an increasingly “multipolar” world, and we’re going to have to recognize that and get good at living in it.'...
'living in an increasingly populist world means learning to put ourselves in others’ shoes, and see ourselves as others see us. We are the rich kid on the block...and if we want to share the world and work in the world with everyone else, then we’ve got to understand that that’s how we'll be seen. And proceed with appropriate sensitivity and humility.

Amen! Reality, Character, Community & Humility -- who could ask for more?

Posted: Mon - February 21, 2005 at 04:51 AM        

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