23 Jun 2006 - 28 Nov 2021
The mission of Democracy is to build a vibrant and vital progressivism for the twenty-first century that builds on the movement’s proud history, is true to its central values, and is relevant to present times.
Democracy will publish on a quarterly basis and serve as a place where ideas can be developed and important debates can be spurred.
We do not seek to publish policy papers; we’ll leave the important details on budget line items and dollar figures to others. Rather, we seek breakthrough thinking on the concepts and approaches that respond to the central transformations of our time: the breakdown of the ladder of upward mobility; the promise and problems of an information-based, globalized economy; new national security threats which cross old boundaries and defy old assumptions from jihadist terrorism and nuclear proliferation to climate change, pandemics, and poverty; and a society where people work and live in new and different ways.
Progressives have been at their best when we are both rigorous in looking at the world as it is and vigorous in introducing creative approaches to remake the world as we believe it should be. Democracy is not interested in either reiterating the conventional wisdom or maintaining unity around outdated orthodoxies. We see our role as upsetting tired assumptions, moving past outdated and obsolete divisions, and stretching the envelope of what is accepted by and of progressives.
Our ambitions are large – as is the scale of the work before us – but we have no doubt that ideas can change the course of our nation. Now is the time to fashion a new progressivism for the twenty-first century, and we welcome all who are willing to join in this conversation.
CFED: In our Fall Issue, we feature a symposium supported by the Corporation for Enterprise Development (
CFED) on
“The Forgotten 40 Percent,” the low- and moderate-income families who lost a staggering amount of wealth and assets in the Great Recession. The issue will be distributed at CFED’s biennial
Assets Learning Conference in Washington, D.C. from September 19-21.
The Washington Post: In a September 11 piece on
The Washington Post’s website, Post opinions editor James Downie
wrote about the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the theme of civic obligation, citing
Democracy journal’s
“Reclaiming Citizenship” symposium from the Spring 2012 issue.
Democracy: A Journal of Ideas: Democracy hosted a foreign policy roundtable discussion at the Metropolitan Club in Washington, D.C. on June 6. The event was sponsored by Democracy board member Robert Abernethy and featured U.S. Sen. Jack Reed (D, R.I.) and former Director of Policy Planning at the State Department Anne-Marie Slaughter as special guests.