Growth & Justice Blog

Recommended Reading: Ember Reichgott Junge on charter schools, and John Watson Milton on Senate Majority Leader Nick Coleman Sr.

For lovers of Minnesota, for history buffs and for students and practitioners of public policy, I highly recommend two outstanding books released this week.

One is "Zero Chance of Passage: The Pioneering Charter School Story,'' by former state Sen. Ember Reichgott Junge, a key state leader in education, human services, and governmental redesign and a primary champion of the school-choice and charter school movement of the 1980s and 1990s.  Reichgott Junge skillfully weaves the story of emerging education innovation in Minnesota, from the influence of union leader Albert Shanker, through Gov. Rudy Perpich's bold effort to push through public-school choice, to her own championing of the fights for post-secondary options and finally, Minnesota's emergence as the leading model state in the charter school movement.   Controversy still surrounds charter schools, but they are here to stay, and I'm personally glad that this option was available when my own daughter sought an alternative to her big public high school a few years ago.  (If you buy the book online between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.on May 9, Ember tells me, there's a chance amazon.com will help with promotion.) 

The other is "For the Good of the Order: Nick Coleman and the High Tide of Liberal Politics in Minnesota, 1971-81,''  by former state Sen.  John Watson Milton, and who served with Majority Leader Coleman in a heyday of progressive reform.   This golden decade, in which Coleman arguably had more influence than any other leader, stretched from the Minnesota Miracle and greater state responsibility for education funding and quality,  to putting teeth in civil rights legislation and expanding the rights of women and minorities and gays and lesbians, to campaign finance reform, to environmental cleanups, to progressive tax overhauls.   As former vice-president Walter F. Mondale writes in the foreword:   "In many ways, (Coleman) and Roger Moe, his successor as Senate majority leader, were more important than many governors we've had _ lasting longer, creating a revolution, and elevating the legislative branch to an equal footing with the executive...Nick Coleman was one of the brightest and most effective people in public office I've ever known.''

Both books will serve as reference works for years to come.   And they are a reminder of what's possible in our political process, and an inspiration for future stewards of our state government.

 

Dane Smith

 

Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive Speech on Lincoln's Birthday

On Abraham Lincoln's birthday (Feb. 12, 1809) in 1913, beloved former President Teddy Roosevelt delivered one of the great speeches in American history, a ringing declaration for a more expansive democracy and government, one that helped its own people succeed and did much more than protect the property of its wealthiest citizens.

As the party that once was Roosevelt's searches for its soul – and increasingly is wrenched toward de-legitimizing government and democracy itself – this is a time to reflect on the equality and humanism advanced by those two great Republican presidents on Mt. Rushmore. (Voters in Minnesota, distinctively progressive from statehood on, voted overwhelmingly for Abe and Tedddy, and Minnesota was one of only six states Roosevelt carried under his new banner in the 1912 election.)

At this point in history, Roosevelt was no longer president and had broken with conservatives in his own party who were opposed to his many progressive reforms, ranging from the progressive income tax to worker protections to food-and-safety regulation. In this speech at the Hotel Astor in New York City, Roosevelt reminded his audience that Lincoln was not a conservative but a radical equalizer who fought a war for human rights over property rights, and who once said that "labor is the superior of capital" and that "we are for the man before the dollar." 

In his opening words, Roosevelt explained that the new Progressive Party was "a manifestation of the eternal forces of human growth, a manifestation of the God-given impulse implanted in mankind to make a better race and a better earth." And then he uttered these words, which I highly recommend for moderates and progressives today who search for inspiration in the fight against those who seek to return our nation to 19th Century rugged individualism.

We recognize that property has its rights; but they are only incident to, they come second to, the rights of humanity. We hold that the resources of the earth were placed here for the use of man in the mass, that they are to be developed for the common welfare of all, that they are not to be seized by a few for the purpose of oppression of the many, or even with disregard for the rights of the many. Yet we earnestly believe and insist that our policy, so far from being detrimental to property or to business, will be for the good of property and business, because our policy is to put both property and business in their proper relations with humanity.

At the close of the speech, Roosevelt called on Americans to "make this nation a real democracy; an economic as well as political democracy free from every taint of either sectional or sectarian hatred… a democracy of true brotherhood... a democracy which stands for each individual's performance of his own duty toward others even more than for his insistence upon his rights as against others.''

The two Roosevelt presidents, Republican Theodore and his even more influential Democratic fifth cousin, Franklin D., helped transform the United States over the last century in to a fairer and more civilized nation, and one that grew ever more powerful and rich as a result of that fairness and greater equality of opportunity and result.

Lincoln and the Roosevelts believed what most Americans actually still believe, that their own governments have a proper and fundamental role in improving their lives and providing fairness and greater equality of opportunity, and that this is good for business and profits in the long run. Or in the words of many of today's leading economists, equity is the superior growth model.

Dane Smith