The Radical Middle

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Ted Halstead Writing A New Social Contract

"The polarization of the two-party cartel gives the broad public, in effect, no choice," says Ted Halstead, co-author of The Radical Center (Doubleday, 2001). What voters are seeking instead, he argues, are new choices and new ways of doing democracy that give them a voice in the governing 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, increased choice for some is running up against the American tradition of fairness, resulting in greater poverty and inequality -- that is, fewer choices for the poor. The political parties, he says, are fundamentally trapped in the either-or, us-versus-them thinking of the past. "We need a new social contract worthy of the 21st century that gives us both flexibility and fairness," he says.

Massive social changes and political realignments are needed, Halstead thinks, and they tend to happen under certain social and political conditions: rapid technological change, war, shifting demographics, economic inequality, and weakening and shifting allegiances to political parties. "All of these factors are aligning now," observes the one-time environmental activist, who founded his first think tank, Redefining Progress, at age 24. "In the near future we'll see a radical shift in American 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 draw from a variety of political traditions -- like portable health insurance that stays with individuals no matter where they work, or instant runoff voting, which gives voters more choices by letting them rank candidates in order of preference. "The radical center is about openness to rethinking basic principles," he says. "What makes this radical is not that it's extreme but that 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 Star Trek: The Next Generation, a race of parasites dependent on a totalitarian "group mind" -- and that might strike you as a good thing. But, according to Tom Atlee, there is such a thing as co-intelligence -- and, he says, it could revive our democracy.

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