Rockridge has been working hard on cooking the overall frames and themes that can tie the community together. I am not sure if they have the working and exact language nailed yet but I feel like this is as close as they have come.
It is nice to see them converge a bit with another leader in this space : The Opportunity Agenda which also moved into this space of supporting empowerment by thinking about the systems that support it...education, justice, environment, democracy, etc.
My sense is that more and more groups and issue campaigns can start to hang message work and policy agendas off these frames in the future.
Link: No Center, No Centrists — Rockridge Institute.
he progressive view of government is simple. Progressive government has two aspects: protection and empowerment. Protection is far more than the military, police, and fire departments. It includes consumer protection, worker protection, environmental protection, public health, food and drug safety; social security, and other safety nets. It also includes protection from the government itself, and hence a balance of powers, openness, fundamental rights, and so on.
Empowerment include roads and bridges; public education; government-developed communications like the internet and satellite communications systems; the banking system; the SEC and institutions that make a stock market possible, and the court system, mostly about contracts and corporate law. Progressive government makes business possible. No one makes any money in this country without the progressive empowerment by government. A progressive foreign policy is not based solely, or even mainly, on the state — about the "national interest" defined as our military strength and GDP. Progressive foreign policy focuses on individual people's interests as well as national interests: on poverty, disease, refugees, education, women's and children's issues, public health, and so on.
I disagree with the bashing on all business and industry that goes on in Rockridge presentation of the idea. Industries are not part of a mono culture and there are plenty of good leaders that get and work toward creating consistent security, empowerment and opportunity.
