Radical Middle
Satin, Mark & MORRIS, CHARLES R.
B O O K S What works & what doesn't Stand Up Fight Back Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge T /. Dionne /r. Radical Middle The Politics We Need Now \lark...
...Democrats, in short, should stop apologizing and say forthrightly what they stand for...
...Bush's foul-ups and overreachings may indeed presage liberalism's return to power, if not at this election then at the next...
...The greater part of the book consists of short chapters that state daunting problems and then summarily solve them...
...The Reagan Revolution was explicitly anti-1960s and everything the decade stood for...
...Radical Middle The Politics We Need Now \lark ',of in Charles R. Morris t is a truth universally acknowledged that American politics runs in generational cycles...
...If you heard a voice in your head start "But, how...," you're probably short on "prime radical-middle qualities: vision and common sense...
...This (2 semesters) course provides a sound foundation for mission taking into account the challenges of today's world All enquiries should be directed to The Registrar Missionary Institute London Holcombe House, The Ridgeway, London NWT 4HY, Tel: +44 (0)20 8900 1893 Email: mil Smdx ar.uk Commonweal 2 5 June 4, 2004...
...As if tax cuts on stock dividends and gutting environmental regulations had something to do with terrorism...
...Prior to that, the Bush administration was looking very shaky...
...t~r~srtis I'M so rirlt 1 rao l I, 1'ii.l~t Iris ani/ iZrtcv sl !;roirh...
...Even Adam Smith knew that there are categories of issues for which the free play of markets makes things worse...
...Well, maybe it's the haut a bas tone, the disdain of politics, the smug armchair analyses, the insufferable smart-aleckness...
...The resurgence of Democratic liberalism that took Johr Kennedy to the White House was powered by revulsion at racial segregation, distaste for Republican coziness with big corporations, dismay about environmental degradation, and worries over slow economic growth...
...Current Courses...
...Just as the crass urge for money is the poison bramble at the heart of Bush-style conservatism, technocratic arrogance is the disease of liberalism, and a big part of the reason that liberals find their apparently natural constituencies, like ordinary workers and families, so often lined up on the other side...
...In fairness to Satin, he is as much in tune with liberalism's New Deal roots as Dionne is...
...The 1970s were liberalism's time of tears—runaway inflation, the messy extrication from Vietnam, the loss of industrial competitiveness, Jimmy Carter in his Rose Garden...
...Why do so many liberal preachments grate like glass shards on a blackboard...
...II ebrua - awl Sept einher intakes) MA in Peace and justice "Ibis well established MA offers insights and new approaches to (3 semesters) human areas where Peace ~y justice and Integrity of creation are needed MA in Mission Studies A popular MA that tackles the views and concepts of Mission in (3 semesters) the zzst century Diploma Missiology This Diploma offers possibilities to both understand and transmit (z semesters) Gospel values in multicultural and multi faith societies New Courses From SEPTEMBER 2004 MA in CHRISTIAN Leadership This MA provides a sound theoretical and skill based approach to (3 semesters) work as a church leader MA in PASTORAL Theology This MA equips students with a sound theoretical approach and (z semesters) practical skills to work in contextual pastoral care Diploma in Evangelization The understanding of evangelization in recent years has (2 semesters) undergone many changes particularly in the context of economic andpolitical situations...
...Government is part of the solution, not just part of the problem...
...For example, you may have thought that health care was a knotty problem...
...Glibness and overweening self-confidence were never in short supply in Roosevelt's brain trust, or in John Kennedy's...
...The onset of fatal conservative hubris may have come just after September 11, 2001...
...As the Saturday Night Live skits used to say, "Not...
...Now we call for investment in human capital...
...It opens breathlessly: "Slowly at first, and now in growing numbers, from kitchen tables to nonprofit organizations to corporate boards, Americans are turning away from the politics of bickering and division and working out a new politics—a politics of creative problem solving...
...Charles R. Morris is the author of many books, including American Catholic (Times) and Money, Greed, and Risk (Crown...
...Certainly, the conservative paradigm has swept all before it, becoming so ingrained in the 1990s that Bill Clinton, mirroring Nixon's volte-face in 1968, held office by adopting long-held conservative positions on issues like budgets and welfare...
...Publishing schedules being what they are, Dionne's book was written well before Iraq and terrorism began to morph into potential millstones for the Bush re-election campaign, which makes Dionne's sense of Republican vulnerability all the more prescient...
...One imagines it will have a wide audience...
...Then it cynically exploited the drop in Democratic defenses to push through one of the most partisan programs in recent memory...
...Is anyone making odds...
...What about horrors like Rwanda...
...Dionne's book is essentially a campaign primer, and an admirable one...
...The Clintonian route to power entailed coopting conservative slogans, especially the jargon of business and markets...
...E. J. Dionne is a well-known political analyst and syndicated columnist (also a Commonweal contributor), who, in his very commonsensical Stand Up Fight Back, suggests that the wheel is turning yet again...
...Markets are wonderful, but sometimes they just produce gasguzzling SUVs...
...The defection of Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords in the spring of 2001 had put the Democrats in control of the Senate, and a groundswell was building against Bush's badly skewed tax program and his Wall Street-driven agenda for Social Security...
...Nope, it's simple—just provide universal health coverage through private insurance, with appropriate subsidies for the poor...
...Restructure the UN Security Council, create "regional or subregional" peacekeeping organizations, create a standing UN army of two hundred thousand or so, adopt the go/no-go intervention rules Satin suggests, and move on to the next problem...
...Perfectly obvious, and you'll save money besides...
...B O O K S What works & what doesn't Stand Up Fight Back Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge T /. Dionne /r...
...The paper conduded that the president should "use the moment to press a broad agen19...
...While its recommendations are neither startling, nor even especially original, it is clear, acutely argued, and nicely structured...
...This course will examine those changes and find today's basis for evangelization Diploma in Mission Spirituality Evangelization flows from a deep personal conviction...
...That was twenty-four years ago...
...Safety nets for the old and the poor won't destroy private enterprise...
...Satin was for a few years a student radical, for a few years a blue-collar worker, and for a much longer period a corporate banker...
...In the words of one party leader: "We used to call for immunizing little children against disease...
...At this moment, you are probably slapping your head and exclaiming, "Wow...
...Liberalism's triumph turned to hubris by Richard Nixon's first term—when even Nixon proclaimed that "we are all Keynesians now," and sponsored a form of guaranteed income for the poor...
...SCHWADRON da that he believes is in the national interest...
...Dionne wants Democrats to be true to their roots in the New Deal...
...The conservative campaign against taxes in almost any form has long since passed the point of wanton antigovernment destructiveness...
...The Greeks could have told us what came next...
...That blend of insights allows him to perceive obvious solutions to almost everything...
...Mark Satin's irritating Radical Middle is a timely clue to what gave liberalism a bad name in the first place...
...Again, pretty straightforward...
...Why didn't I think of that...
...Just as the media and think tanks used to be dominated by the "liberal elite," large slices of both now look like kennels for conservative attack dogs...
...One small cavil: I should have I Commonweal 24 June 4, 2004 liked to see Dionne's assessment of internal Republican weaknesses, like the peculiar alliance between the big business antitax interest and the Christian right...
...Just as liberals did in the 1960s, conservatives, in short, may have overplayed their hand...
...With the catastrophe of 9/11, though, and the consequent upsurge of patriotic feeling, the administration called for an end to partisanship and for a national pulling together...
...Is it too much to hope that liberals have learned from their time in the wilderness...
...It is not an accident that most of Satin's nostrums come out of liberal-leaning think tanks or policy foundations like the New America Foundation...
...The bulk of Dionne's book is a plea for Democrats to break out of the linguistic and mental straitjacket conservatives have suckered them into...
...As the Wall Street Journal put it: "the bloody attacks have created a unique political moment when Americans of all stars and stripes are uniting behind their president...
...MISSIONARY INSTITUTE LONDON The Missionary Institute London is pleased to offer the following courses to people involved in any form of mission activity in the world...
Vol. 131 • June 2004 • No. 11
