Join us in a discussion of 'The State of Our Union'
Monday, January 23, 2006
(The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation)Starting today, Rich Harwood will be publishing
a four-part series of blog entries on "The
State of Our Union," leading up to President
Bush's annual address to Congress Jan. 31. His
first topic: "In Search of Truth."
The
Harwood Institute invites you to participate in
this important conversation by visiting Rich's
blog, http://www.richardharwood.org/,
and commenting on this and other pieces that
will appear this week.
Rich will be
writing on such topics as:
- The role of political leaders in the state
of our union;
- Our ability - and inability - to see and
hear each other; and
- Happiness - and the pursuit of happiness - in today's society.
In our work across the country, people have told us that leaders at both the national and even most local levels are failing to reflect the reality of people's lives in their words and actions. The result is that people are unable to see themselves in public life and politics. They are both enraged that their thoughts, opinions, and words are misrepresented, misunderstood, and even twisted by leaders. At the same time, people are expressing a deep lament - a sense of resignation - that they are powerless to fix the problem.
The result is that many people have simply retreated from public life and politics and only engage with their close-knit circles of family friends. This leaves only the extremes in public life - the vocal minorities at opposite ends of the political spectrum - to argue in the public square. Unfortunately, many leaders fail to even recognize the problem and believe that instead of being in retreat, we have become more divided. Their responses to this faulty analysis only cause people to retreat further.
More information on the people's retreat from public life and politics - and how we begin to reverse this retreat - can be found in Rich Harwood's latest book, Hope Unraveled: The People's Retreat and Our Way Back.