Two years ago this month, The Independent Agenda launched, just in time for the debt-limit crisis that caused Standard & Poor’s to strip the U.S. of its AAA credit rating. Then came the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, primary … More…
What We Stand For RSS feed for this section
Can Capitalism Still Deliver the Goods?
Nearly five years after the fall of Lehman Brothers, global free market capitalism is still struggling.
Europe is mired in recession and a debt crisis; some of its countries are in depression. The UK has entered a “triple-dip” recession. Once-hot … More…
What Government Should and Shouldn’t Do
Needs are endless but resources are limited. It’s been a fact of human existence from the very beginning. As Deuteronomy said: “There will always be poor people in the land.”
Now, we face stark choices on how to divvy up … More…
The Next Four Years
There will be no honeymoon for President Obama as he prepares for his second term. Too many big challenges face him and Congress, and the country is watching closely.
The president and Congressional leaders have made the right noises about … More…
A Special Message from The Independent Agenda
To Friends of The Independent Agenda:
You might have noticed no emails and new postings from The Independent Agenda over the last two weeks.
That was not intentional. As the 2012 election campaign unfolds and the debate over America’s future … More…
The End of the Welfare State
Back in 1996, just before President Bill Clinton signed a welfare reform bill, he declared: “The era of big government is over.”
The other shoe dropped a couple of weeks ago when another chastened Democratic president, Barack Obama, signed a … More…
An Independent Agenda
Liberals and conservatives have both reached the limits of their ideologies, and both have failed in different ways (see “Where Liberals Failed” and “Where Conservatives Failed”).
So, what would an independent alternative look like?
First, it … More…
Where Liberals Failed
“To those who charge that liberalism has been tried and found wanting, I answer that the failure is not in the idea but in the course of recent history”—former Sen. George McGovern, (defeated) Democratic presidential candidate, 1972.
Liberalism has two … More…
Where Conservatives Failed
“The [Bush] aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’
“‘That’s not the way the world really … More…
