The Importance of Ideas
While on a panel with John Fullerton last week at the BALLE conference, Gar Alperovitz offered a powerful thought on the importance of ideas which we subsequently asked him to capture in writing. Here is his response:
“Rarely do important new ideas matter in politics. What usually matters is the momentum of entrenched power....
But not always!
Sometimes--when the old ideas no longer explain the world, when it is obvious that something is wrong--new ideas matter, and matter a very great deal. Now is such a time: As the global and domestic economic, political, and climate change crisis increase pain and force people to ask ever more penetrating questions, there is a need for--and a hunger for--new understanding, new clarity, and a new way forward that is intelligible and intelligent. Ideas matter now, perhaps more profoundly than at any time in modern American history.”