Thursday 25 April 2024
Co-edited by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner
Authors of Voice of the People: the Transpartisan Imperative in American Life
THE TRANSPARTISAN REVIEW will be an interactive, on-line journal of politics, society, and culture, including economics, produced for the politically inclined of every hue. It will aim to add to, rather than displace, current political discourse. It will offer information and tools as a curated forum among people working to productively reduce, harness, and/or transcend the conflict in our politics. THE REVIEW will actively seek out and promote the develop-ment of ideas and processes intended to bring people together in the search for effective solutions to real problems.
THE TRANSPARTISAN REVIEW will provide a unique forum in which to address political, social and cultural matters that followed the end of World War II. These include the calm of the 1950s and the turbulence of the 1960s, the upheavals of a transforming global economy, volatile demographics, explosive technology, capricious and faltering institutions, and the global disruptions following the Cold War’s end. It will focus on and highlight perspectives that bring people together and seek shared ground among groups now in apparent conflict.
THE TRANSPARTISAN REVIEW will address issues emerging from the apparent disintegration of the traditional political, social and cultural order. This disintegration arises in part from significant changes in philosophy (declining reliance on authority and increasing approval of self-expression), social reorganization (empowered individuals increasingly alienated from centralized institutions), and technology (information-emboldened people weakening institutional hierarchies including markets, media and governments).
THE TRANSPARTISAN REVIEW will explore new, expanded, forms of leadership. Traditional order depends on ‘directive’ leadership, imposed authority, and habitual behavior. As traditional order declines, new freedoms emerge. These freedoms empower people to play more active, conscious roles in community life. As freedom/order relationships shift, the traditional left/right spectrum shifts and is less able to describe or contain daily politics. The REVIEW will report on the significance of these shifts and their interaction.
THE TRANSPARTISAN REVIEW will track the emergence of consciously self-governing communities. In such groups, peoples’ obligation to each other derives less from tradition and authority and more from personal (some would say spiritual) connections. These connections depend on trust. In Voice of the People: The Transpartisan Imperative in American Life we reported on many trust based projects occurring on international, national, state, and local levels. We now know of, and will report on, more such projects.
We come from different ends of the ideological political spectrum: one (Chickering) from the Right—William Buckley and Milton Friedman were two of his closest friends—the other (Turner) from the Left—original Nader’s Raider, counting Ohio Democratic Senators Howard Mezenbaum and Sherrod Brown as personal friends. Yet we share a core belief that the way forward is to find synergy in our differing perspectives and use them to find new, creative solutions.
We are creating THE TRANSPARTISAN REVIEW to provide a forum among interested people, for discourse, dialogue, and debate on our current political system’s tendency to alienate its people. This includes ways to be more responsive to the continuing challenges we face—to explore paths to bring us together, to recognize our shared connections, and to address our common condition.
A. Lawrence Chickering, Esq.
Napa Valley, California
James S. Turner, Esq.
Washington, DC
July 4th, 2016
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