The Minnesota Star Tribune Publishes an Article on The Reconstruction Papers

Way back on June 15th, I sent David M. Perry a PDF of The Reconstruction Papers, on the off chance he'd have the opportunity to write about it in some way.

Two months later, the Minnesota Star Tribune published his article that spends quite a lot of time talking about it and about Liberal Currents.

Here's an excerpt:

For example, this summer, the magazine Liberal Currents published “The Reconstruction Papers,” a collection of 21 essays, each tackling a specific problem by offering detailed solutions. They talk about protecting democracy, fixing immigration, higher education, funding science, trade and more, grounding each proposal within the realm of the possible, but not necessarily the easy.

I recently spoke with Adam Gurri, publisher and co-founder of the magazine. He told me the goal was to chart out a path “going back to the New Deal aspiration of building a truly capable and liberal state that is generous,” paired with the “age-old American obsession of trying to put in safeguards against dictatorship.”

Since the print version has been available roughly one month ago, we have been hard at work putting them in the hands of people in media and politics. It is a lengthy, text-dense collection, so it takes people time to look through it and determine whether they're going to say something about it in public. But as Perry's case shows, these things can have a long fuse. I have heard other, quite promising rumblings as well.

Perry has his eye on the ball in terms of the stakes:

The trifectas of 2009 and 2021 entered in moments of crisis (the financial collapse of 2008 and COVID, respectively). And I’m sure if we’re lucky enough to win in 2028, we’ll be in yet another crisis. A coup. A plague. A war. A recession. Maybe all of it. In such a moment, this time, we can’t squander the opportunity.

We spearheaded The Reconstruction Papers for this exact reason: we cannot afford to squander any opportunity right now. Trump 2 is MAGA shooting its shot; we have got to shoot our the moment we get the chance. But it has to be the right shot, something with a real chance of putting liberal democracy on better, and more durable footing.

That is what The Reconstruction Papers proposed to do in a wide variety of areas. We have a little under 500 print copies left; if you do not yet have one, consider getting one today.