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Radical
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BLOG, AKA ONLINE NEWSLETTER: Sign Up to Receive Monthly Article Alerts Selected E-mails to the Editor ARCHIVES: ARCHIVE A: Access Past Mark Satin Articles, 2005- Present ARCHIVE B: Access Past Mark Satin Articles, 1999- 2004 ARCHIVE X: Access Past John Avlon Articles, 2004-06 RADICAL MIDDLE, THE BOOK: RESPOND TO OUR ARTICLES AND VIEW OTHERS' RESPONSES: Feisty E-mails to the Editor, 2008 Feisty E-mails to the Editor, 2007 Feisty E-mails to the Editor, 2006 Feisty E-mails to the Editor, 2005 Feisty Letters to the Editor, 2002-04 Feisty Letters to the Editor, 1999-2001 WHO WE ARE: About the Editor (In-House Version) About the Editor (By Marilyn Ferguson) About Our Wonderful Pledgers -- and How You Can Join Them About Our Directors and Advisors About Our Sponsor, the Center for Visionary Law RADICAL MIDDLE CONGRES- SIONAL SCORECARDS: 109th and 110th Congresses (2005-08) RADICAL MIDDLE POLITICAL BOOK AWARD WINNERS: SOME PRIOR RADICAL MIDDLE BOOKS: 50 Best "Third Way" Books of the 1990s 25 Best "Transformational" Books of the 1980s 25 Best "New Age Politics" Books of the 1970s SOME PRIOR BOOKS BY MARK SATIN: New Options for America (book drawn from New Options News- letter, 1983-92) |
"Satin sees what he calls
radical middle politics as an innovation that's ideally suited to 21st
century America." Why “Radical Middle”? Radical Middle Newsletter doesn’t just report on innovative political ideas, books, and national meetings. It expresses an emerging political perspective and sensibility that we like to call “radical middle. We call it a “sensibility” as well as a perspective because it’s not necessarily positional. Journalist E.J. Dionne expresses it as a series of questions (see Writers And Politicians Try To Describe the Radical Middle elsewhere on this website). Political philosopher Andrew Schmookler found he could best express it through a fictional e-mail discussion among people of divergent views (Debating the Good Society: A Quest to Bridge America's Moral Divide,1999). As a political perspective, it’s not a "safe" middle ground between the extremes of left and right. It’s off the traditional left-right spectrum . . . free to gather up ideas from everywhere. But it's not counter-cultural, either. Some of its spokespeople -- including our editor -- grew up in the alternative culture and learned first-hand the limitations of a utopian politics disconnected from governing. It’s “radical” because it’s seeking solutions that are holistic and sustainable. It’s “middle” because it accepts that you can’t change people very much. The Biblical vices will always be there . . . in every one of us, in fact. Although the radical middle perspective can't be summed up in a couple of glib phrases, here are some aspects that Radical Middle Newsletter likes to stress:
The radical middle infuriates many activists because it’s in love with messy, ambitious, exuberant humanity. It says “YES!” to science and technology, to entrepreneurship, to bringing us all into One (admittedly imperfect) World. And it infuriates many others because it wants to give everyone, and we mean EVERYONE, a fair start in life. Most of its preferred solutions won’t be debated on the floor of the Senate anytime soon. The best thing about the radical middle perspective, though, is that it’s just beginning to be articulated, examined, refined. YOU can still affect it. And in many different guises, it’s emerging everywhere -- in Silicon Valley, in community groups that don’t just focus on protest, in the words (if not often the deeds) of Vaclav Havel and Tony Blair, in over 100 organizations both prominent and obscure. . . . Some say it could emerge as the humane governing philosophy of the 21st century (see Writers And Politicians Try To Describe the Radical Middle). And many say the best place to watch it emerge is Radical Middle Newsletter. Radical Middle's Board of Directors created this vision-and-purpose statement in 1999 and I still stand by every word. (Okay, maybe not the Tony Blair reference.) For my description of the "third force in American politics" two decades earlier, see my contribution HERE. And for a description of the third force in our time, see the preface to my book Radical Middle: The Politics We Need Now HERE. -- Mark Satin
YES, LOGO? This logo was created for us in the year 2005 by the talented young founder of Openartist, Paul Bloch. Because radical middle public policy aspires to be more creative than any simple combination of Democrat and Republican ideas (see above!), I think a third creature representing imaginative new ideas -- owl? wolf? rhinoceros? -- needs to be in there somewhere. -- M.S. |
THE RADICAL MIDDLE CONCEPT: Over 40 Good People (Try to) Describe the Radical Middle 50 Best Radical Middle Books of the '00s (so far) Five Best Radical Middle Magazines, annotated Over 20 Arguably Radical Middle National POLITICIANS GREAT RADICAL MIDDLE GROUPS AND BLOGS: NEW: Over 50 Great Radical Centrist Blogs - all with their bloggers named and described! NOT JUST RADICAL MIDDLE: Ten Best U.S. Political Novels, annotated 25 RED- HOT RADICAL MIDDLE INITIATIVES: Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget Information Technology & Innovation Foundation Institute for Alternative Futures National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation Republican Main Street Partnership SOME PRIOR RADICAL MIDDLE INITIATIVES: Generational Equity and Communitarian platforms,1990s U.S. Green Party's "Ten Key Values" statement, 1980s Civil Rights Movement, 1960s (your editor is HERE, 6th from bottom) |