Why the new state?  We have entered into a new American epoch.  Economic, technological, and political structures that have been the framework of the study and practice of public administration have radically changed.  In the ever so close past, the ends that governing sought were limited to economic development.  Safety, housing, the environment, and education had all become commodities and have been used as means to generate economic development. Privatization, outsourcing, de-regulation, and “creative”  finance are just a few of the tools that public administrators have used to generate economic development.  But now with the collapse of our economy we have realized that the focus on economic development has left us with crumbling infrastructure,  substandard education and environmental policy, over-crowded jails, a food production industry dependent on environmentally devastating practices, massive corruption, a socially stagnant classes with little mobility, and greater wealth accumulation in a ridiculously few.    A self interested society, it turns out, is not sustainable.  

The majority of Americans have a bleak future as our investments have disappeared, our home equity has vanished, our healthcare system in unmanageable and dehumanizing, our police forces are militaristic, and for what?  Simply, for a few individuals to get stinking rich.  But, the future doesn’t have to be that way.  It is the dawn of a new America, and if a better future is the path that we choose, it can be so.

With the election of Obama the left has retaken the leadership of this country.  It is my hope that this is a new era of progressivism.  An era where we can make progress in solving our heath care, environmental, educational, and social crises.  New ideals are emerging on what America should be like.  There is great optimism with this president-elect and with his handling of the transition we see something that we have not seen for a long time.  Obama is empowering the left and center to take responsibility for being the force that we want to see in the world.  Some have compared this to Reagan and how Reagan empowered the right and center to take responsibility for being the neoliberal force in the world.  It was an admirable effort and might have done good in the world if the world was different.  But the world that we live in, and the world we want to the future to be like, is incommensurable with the neoliberal world view.   In that world the individual was always in competition with everyone else. Retrospectively the assumptions of neoliberalism changed the American ideal of strength through diversity.

The strength of diversity has taken on a darwinian, selection of the fittest or market selection slant.  To assume that diversity is good because if provides options from one to choose negates the value of diversity as it is presupposed from the outgo that it is not the diversity that is good, but that diversity provides options from which one can choose.  That choice is the end, not diversity.  The more options, the greater the chances that there is one that fits best in the current environment or that one best represents the preferences of a group.

This view of diversity yields no benefits to society other than reinforcing the economic monism of neoliberalism.  Diversity is not a means to create a pool from which one can select a best fit through trial and error.  It is also not a means to provide an aggregation of preferences.  Sustainable and peaceful diversity should be the end if democracy is a means to an end.  Democracy and government are the theory and the tool to progress America  toward being a just and good society.

For me, thenewstate.com is an opportunity to build a diverse discourse recognizing that peaceful diversity is the end of which governance is the means.  I look forward to see what emerges on this site.