The Post-Partisan Forum
Topics (in reverse chronological order) with links to download the slides
June 7, 2025
American liberalism faces a governance crisis: despite controlling major institutions for decades, progressive policies have failed in many ways to deliver the outcomes Americans need. Housing remains unaffordable, infrastructure projects stall, and bureaucracy frustrates both reformers and citizens.
In response to the Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025," numerous reform "Project 2029" proposals are emerging from think tanks and academics—each offering different visions for America's future. Over the coming months, the Forum will examine these diverse "Project 2029" proposals, evaluating them for reasonableness and their potential to bridge our nation's red-blue divide.
We begin with Klein & Thompson's scholarly bestseller, "Abundance," a critique of present-day liberalism from the left. The authors, both respected policy analysts, argue that recent decades of liberalism gave us a government that has "forgotten how to build the things that people want." Their academic analysis urges removing the barriers erected by past liberal agendas so we can have more housing, more education, more innovations, "more of everything."
Join us for an introduction to this influential work where we will consider the strength of its evidence and the value of its proposed solutions.
At the Forum, we strive for balance and synthesis between viewpoints from the left and right. We begin each session with an AI-generated summary designed to be fact-based and fair to both perspectives—part of our ongoing exploration of how artificial intelligence can enhance civil policy discussions. Those who are curious about this technology are invited to stay afterwards for a brief demonstration
“From Scarcity To “Abundance” -- Re-Orienting Liberalism"
May 3, 2025
The current upheaval in the U.S. government and erosion of civil rights has left many of us wondering how grassroots opposition movements were organized in other parts of the world. Cursory research reveals that they required considerable labor. However, before getting discouraged, people should realize that AI and social media have recently combined to streamline the process. Now a handful of people can accomplish what used to require dozens of volunteers.
Join our May Forum to learn about two examples of how resistance movements that succeeded in locations as disparate as Taiwan and Serbia. Once we have outlined their playbooks, we’ll examine how online democracy platforms such as Polis and large language models can automate the grunt work those two movements had to invest to launch their campaigns. Before breaking into discussion groups, we’ll consider:
· What would an AI platform for democracy look like in mid-2025?
· How might such a platform break the political gridlock of recent decades?
· How can AI facilitate planning, content, recruitment, and funding?
· How would citizens collaborate to build this platform?
We'll envision an artificial intelligence app made by the people and for the people, then discuss what would be the likely next steps for implementating such a system. Never has launching a pro-democracy campaign been easier, so this session may provide new hope to many.
Using AI to Organize An Opposition Movement
March 1, 2025
We see America as now paralyzed across many divides: political, religious, racial, regional. Yet there is one question that unites people across ideological categories. Perhaps it indicates what the real conflict between us must be: Are our institutions fundamentally broken?
Over the past five decades, trust in American institutions has withered. Polls consistently show that confidence in organizations designed to serve and sustain public and democratic life, including government, courts, science, media, and higher education, has waned significantly. Into this climate of distrust, emerges "brokenism" - a new framework for understanding America's deepening divisions that transcends traditional left-right politics. Brokenism suggests our key political divide isn't between conservatives and liberals, but between those who believe our institutions can be reformed and those who believe they must be rebuilt from scratch.
During this month’s Forum, we'll examine how this framework could create political opportunities for greater national cohesion that transcend the two-party system, allowing new coalitions to form around rebuilding rather than merely reforming. To ensure our discussion remains grounded in real world patterns and democratic values, we also consider warnings from first-hand observes about how populist movements can exploit institutional dysfunction to enable authoritarian takeovers in Russia and Eastern Europe.
In case you'd like to read up on these topics before our discussion, we have a compiled resource of readings and posted them to https://tinyurl.com/2j2t6mef.