he Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism, with support from the Citizens League, Growth & Justice, Center of the American Experiment and Humphrey School of Public Affairs, invites you to a special Zoom round table on John Brandl’s “uncommon quest for common ground” at 9:00 am on Tuesday, December 28.
Mitch Pearlstein, whose initiative launched the Brandl program in 2008, will join us to recall his personal experience with John.
Our combined efforts reflect the leadership of John Brandl, former state legislator and Dean of the Humphrey Institute (now School). John, a life-long Democrat, took, as his True North, the “uncommon quest for common ground.” John was loath to “dis-include” anyone or their personal truths and narratives. But he quietly and engagingly sought to find the harmonies and goodness which can affirm our common humanity.
This past July, the Pew Research Center surveyed 10,221 American adults. Recently, it released a report categorizing all Americans as belonging to one or another of nine “tribes” in our politics. These rivalrous tribes are: 1) faith and flag conservatives; 2) committed conservatives; 3) populist right; 4) ambivalent right; 5) stressed sideliners; 6) outsider left; 7) Democrat mainstays; 8) establishment liberals; 9) and progressive left.
For two decades, other commentators and analysts of our culture and politics have proposed that we Americans, in our culture and politics, have taken on a bimodal distribution of dispositions as follows:
In contrast to the bimodal distribution of political beliefs and agendas, past understandings of the American democracy (such as Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America) were more in line with a normal gaussian distribution of individual orientations as follows:
The urgent question is whether the American experiment in ordered liberty is collapsing, whether there is any common good left, but only various factional interests and ideologies, just as Madison feared might happen.
Knowing that most great nations and powers lasted about 250 years before disintegrating or collapsing, what kind of program might be most effective at this point in our nation’s history to improve our prospects?
To register, please click here.
The event is free and will last about an hour.
The Zoom link will be emailed to registrants the day before the event.