values

U.S. Sen. Al "Landslide" Franken kicked off a national meeting of progressive leaders in Duluth earlier this month with an opening declaration that "moral indignation is great!’’

Then he added, a little sheepishly and with his trademark perfect timing: “It’s just not very attractive. It's a lesson I've learned.”

His confession, about how his own indignation made his election closer than it should have been, drew knowing laughter from the crowd of about 200 think-tank directors, advocacy groups organizers, and Duluth citizens at a meeting sponsored by the A.H. Zeppa Foundation and directed by the Commonweal Institute, based in California.

And the Progressive Roundtable conference that followed was suffused with the theme that if there is to be a progressive renaissance, it needs to be animated by a spirit of constructive and practical problem-solving, piece-by-piece, and state-by-state.

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Commonweal Institute Executive Director Dr. Barry Kendall is interviewed on Santa Fe Public Radio about Thinking Big: Progressive Ideas for a New Era, the new book from the Progressive Ideas Network.

Press play to listen, or click here to download. Interview begins at 02:30.

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Commonweal Institute Senior Fellow Patrick O'Heffernan interviews Institute Director Dr. Barry Kendall and Nathaniel Loewentheil, Director of the Roosevelt Institution, about the new book from the Progressive Ideas Network, Thinking Big: Progressive Ideas for a New Era.

Press play to listen, or click here to download.

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Commonweal Institute Fellow Bill Scher, host of the Liberal Oasis Radio Show, interviews Dr. Barry Kendall, the Institute's Director and Co-Chair of the Progressive Ideas Network, about the Network's new book, Thinking Big: Progressive Ideas for a New Era.

Press play to listen, or click here to download. Interview begins around 13:00.

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Defining the values that underlie and unite progressives became an urgent question in the early 21st Century. Progressives came to recognize that, to a great degree, our political choices emerge from our sense of cultural identity and our emotional responses to stories and images, not from ‘rational’ cost-benefit analyses.

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With the presidential election looking as if it will depend on the votes of nine welders in Cleveland, it was pretty much inevitable that the V-word would rear its head sooner or later. Out on the hustings last week, President Bush said that Senator Kerry is "out of step with the mainstream values that are so important to our country." Meanwhile Kerry was reminding voters of the importance of "relying on the values that made this country great.”

A foreigner listening to those claims might think that this election was simply a question of who has better values, like Walmart versus Costco. But it goes deeper than that -- it's really about what the word "values" means, and what role it should play in political life.

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With the presidential election looking as if it will depend on the votes of nine welders in Cleveland, it was pretty much inevitable that the V-word would rear its head sooner or later. Out on the hustings last week, President Bush said that Senator Kerry is "out of step with the mainstream values that are so important to our country." Meanwhile Kerry was reminding voters of the importance of "relying on the values that made this country great.”

A foreigner listening to those claims might think that this election was simply a question of who has better values, like Walmart versus Costco. But it goes deeper than that -- it's really about what the word "values" means, and what role it should play in political life.

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"Aesthetic" is probably not the first word that springs to mind in a discussion of modern American conservatism. Dick Armey, aesthetic? Deregulation, aesthetic? How can that be? Aren't conservatives unresponsive to art, hostile to the artistic community?

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