MOOS Core + Additional Resources Blog

Enough about democracy’s weaknesses. Let’s talk about its strengths. -- Amid our continuing frustrations with chaotic democratic systems that repeatedly fail to live up to their ideals, a welcome look at democracy's strengths and its advantages over authoritarianism. -- 12/04/2022
More than 1,000 professors sign on to ‘Stanford Academic Freedom Declaration’ -- For those interested in defending academic freedom and the ability of universities to help us really solve problems, a report on the campaign to build support for the "Chicago Trifecta." -- 12/03/2022
What Makes Life Meaningful? Views From 17 Advanced Economies -- A statistical look at a critical dimension of cultural diversity -- differing assessments of what makes life meaningful. -- 12/03/2022
When Partisans Cry Wolf -- An exceptionally clear explanation of how democracy is actually being undermined by the many ways in which the left and the right frame their political opponents as existential threats to democracy. -- 12/02/2022
A Dispatch from the Exhausted Majority -- A comprehensive look at how the extreme us-vs-them rhetoric of the hard left and the hard right is viewed by the majority of voters who inhabit the political center. -- 12/02/2022
Slouching Towards Utopia -- A review of an important new book, "Slouching Towards Utopia," that offers a complexity-oriented view of the chaotic forces that have produced widespread economic prosperity. -- 12/01/2022
The New Woke Discrimination Demands a New Law -- From the Wall Street Journal, a carefully reasoned explanation of what those on the right see as today's big civil rights issue (and a proposed remedy) -- a controversial viewpoint worth understanding. -- 12/01/2022
A Good-Will Government Was Possible in Israel -- From Naftali Bennett, lessons learned from Israel's attempt to govern across deep political divides -- an attempt that focused on the "70/70 rule" (the 70% of issues that 70% of Israelis agree upon). -- 11/30/2022
Jean-Jacques Subrenat: Implementing Democracy -- Attacks on the rule of law in the U.S.A. are having an impact on the political mores of other democracies. The U.S. badly needs to update its own democracy to preserve the safety and prosperity of all around the world. -- 11/29/2022
Biden Can Still Get Things Done. Achieving National Unity Isn’t One of Them -- For deeply divided society, a more realistic look at things that might be actually accomplished over the near-term. -- 11/21/2022
A Radically Different Model of American Education: UATX’s Jacob Howland Speaks to the PEP -- An update on the University of Austin -- an outside-the-box effort to create a new university capable of avoiding a great many of the problems that now plague higher education. -- 11/21/2022
Biden’s Missing Democracy Pages -- A look at the speech that Biden should have given had he really been concerned with the many ways in which US democracy is being threatened. -- 11/20/2022
Kristin Hansen: Are Bridge-builders Being "Too Nice" to the Right? -- The primary role of bridge-builders in America at this time is to "call in," not to "call out." That this does not make us irrelevant, it makes us essential. -- 11/20/2022
How the 2022 Midterms Became a Squeaker -- Based on more than 70 interviews, a detailed account of the strategic and tactical decisions that enabled Democratic candidates to do so much better than expected. -- 11/19/2022
Democrats took an unconscionable gamble — and it worked -- More on the Democrats' effective, but morally fraught strategy -- promoting the nomination of extreme "Trumpist" candidates and then running against the threat those candidates pose to democracy. -- 11/19/2022
Why Is America Always Divided 50–50 -- An analysis of the many reasons why the United States continues to be so evenly and so bitterly divided with important insights for bridge-building efforts. -- 11/18/2022
Hillary Clinton Accepted Her Loss, but a Lot Has Changed Since 2016 -- Based on the important new book "The Bitter End," an in-depth look at the process of "political calcification" that has made hyper-polarization such an intractable problem. -- 11/18/2022
Matt Legge: Beware the Popular Idea That You Know a Hidden Truth -- This metaphor leads to a binary assumption: I'm right, they are wrong. We'd be well served dropping that assumption, and listening to others to learn how they might, actually, be right, and we are wrong. -- 11/18/2022
AfP Seminar--Toxic Polarization: What's the Left Got to Do with It? -- The language used to refer to the right is just making things worse, not better. The substance of the left's arguments matters too. -- 11/18/2022
Three Theories That Explain This Strange Moment -- An especially perceptive look at three theories that, together, do much to explain the continuing stability and intensity of the United States' hyper-polarized political standoff. -- 11/17/2022
Frederick Golder on Common Ground instead of Polarization -- We cannot change anyone’s opinions, values, ideas, attitudes, judgments, or viewpoints, but, we can understand each other better through learning conversations and use those to find common ground. -- 11/17/2022
The Fever Is Breaking -- A hopeful argument that the 2022 election marks both the beginning of the end of the "performative populism" that has upended US democracy and a new era of real problem-solving. -- 11/17/2022
Guy Burgess: Finding Common Ground / Constructive Approaches for Addressing Differences -- This process focuses on five questions examining the nature of the different beliefs and opinions, and how they might be dealt with most constructively depending on whether they are fact-based, moral, or both. -- 11/15/2022
Andrew Harward: A Vision of Constructive Political Conflict in The United States -- A visioning exercise yields a credible plan for significantly reducing political polarization -- with many additional benefits to individuals, organizations, and society as a whole as well. -- 11/13/2022
Fear of Cancel Culture Is Worse Than Cancel Culture -- The ambiguous and, in many ways, unpredictable ways in which the cancel culture punishes "unacceptable" behavior has dramatically increased its impact (by forcing most everyone to "play it safe"). -- 11/04/2022

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