Welcome to Moral.com!
This site just went up and remains a work in progress. The inspiration for the site was the publication of my new book on values, The Moral Center. (Read the first chapter of the book here.) I wrote The Moral Center because, like so many Americans, I'm tired of the narrow conversation in this country about what it means to be a good and moral person - and what it takes.
Make no mistake: The public's anxiety about moral issues are very real. These are legitimate concerns, not "false consciousness." Yet today, it is the right that tends to pay the most attention to these concerns, dominating the discussion of what has gone wrong with the nation's moral fabric. They blame liberalism for most of our moral problems and channel the values debate to a few divisive issues, like abortion and same-sex marriage. In reality, though, Americans' moral concerns include many issues that are not part of the values debate, such as the growing economic pressures on family, rising greed and inequality, shoddy corporate ethics, and crass materialism. For many Americans, there is a broad feeling that our society is becoming a more selfish, hard-hearted place.
The Moral Center offers an alternative way to think about values and a new moral vision for America. Other thinkers, leaders, and organizations are also doing vital work along these lines. Our hope is that Moral.com will emerge over time as an important community for those seeking to broaden the values debate. Please contact us if you're interested in blogging for the site or having Moral.com link to your organization.
Related to this, we hope that Moral.com can be a clearinghouse for information about values. In the course of writing the book I came across an enormous amount of fascinating research, polling, and commentary on the values debate. One goal of Moral.com is to organize this information in one place and add to it over time, providing a resource for anyone interested in the values debate. We encourage visitors to the site to email us with suggestions for our topic pages.
David Callahan
About David Callahan
DAVID CALLAHAN has written extensively about American history, business, and public policy. He is author of The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead (Harcourt, Jan. 2004). His five previous books include Kindred Spirits: Harvard Business School's Extraordinary Class of 1949 and How They Transformed American Business (John Wiley/Forbes).
David's numerous articles have been published in such places as The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and The American Prospect. He has also been a frequent commentator on television programs on CNN, CBS, PBS, MSNBC, and Fox News, and has been a regular guest on radio talk shows across the United States, including appearances such NPR programs as Morning Edition, The Connection, and the Tavis Smiley Show. David lectures frequently about issues of ethics and integrity to universities, associations, and businesses.
In 1999, David co-founded a new think tank, Demos, a public policy center based in New York City. Demos combines research and advocacy, working to strengthen democracy and expand economic opportunity within the United States. Previous to co-founding Demos, David was a Fellow at the Century Foundation from 1994 to 1999, where he engaged in wide ranging public policy research and analysis. David received his B.A. at Hampshire College and his Ph.D in Politics at Princeton University. Born in 1965, he lives in New York City.
About Demos
Demos' purpose is to help build a society where America can achieve its highest democratic ideals. We believe that requires a democracy that is robust and inclusive, with high levels of electoral participation and civic engagement, and an economy where prosperity and opportunity are broadly shared and disparity is reduced. Founded in 1999, Demos' work combines research with advocacy - melding the commitment to ideas of a think tank with the organizing strategies of an advocacy group.
We have four main program areas:
The Democracy Program
A vibrant, inclusive democracy is the lifeblood of a just society, and depends on the full participation by Americans in elections and in all areas of democratic decision-making. Since the 2000 election, Demos has been working with a spirited reform movement at the national and state levels to promote a broad agenda of voting rights and election reform, including major new efforts to bolster voter registration and voting and remove barriers to political participation. Our work to strengthen American democracy combines advocacy efforts with new research and policy analysis. Specific Democracy Program initiatives include:
- Help America Vote Act (HAVA): Demos has tracked state implementation of HAVA in order to help advocates affect a progressive approach to election reform. We have researched provisional balloting, voter identification and other HAVA-mandated changes, and helped organizers in the field prepare voters for new election procedures. Our post-2004 election focus will include state development of computerized voter registration systems; uniform standards for provisional voting; voter identification; voting machine technology; and voter fraud, vote suppression and irregularities in election administration.
- Voting Rights Restoration: We are working to overturn laws that unfairly bar former prisoners from voting.
- National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) Implementation: Lesser-known provisions of the so-called "Motor Voter" law require states to offer voter registration assistance in various public assistance agencies. Almost all states are doing a very poor job of complying with the public assistance office requirements - dampening the political participation of low-income citizens. Demos and Project Vote have launched a targeted campaign to enhance the voter registration activities in public assistance agencies in advance of the 2004 election and beyond.
- Election Day Registration: Demos is collaborating with a range of state-based partners to help enact Election Day Registration, a reform that demonstrably increases voter turnout and reduces problems at polling places, as evidenced by the six states that currently allow for Election Day Registration.
- Democracy Dispatches: Demos' web-based e-journal offers a daily news-feed on democracy-related issues, a blog analyzing current trends, and in-depth commentary.
The Economic Opportunity Program
The Economic Opportunity Program addresses the widespread economic insecurity and declining opportunity that characterizes American society today. Our efforts are focused on envisioning and ensuring the future middle class, by promoting new ideas in the areas of higher education, income and asset-based policy. Our work examining the growth of personal debt among low- to middle-income households is indicative of the new challenges they face as they try to get by-let alone get ahead. Demos' Economic Opportunity Program offers fresh analysis of old problems and bold ideas for the growing inequality and insecurity facing Americans today. Specific initiatives include:
- Debt and Assets Project: This project has taken a lead role in highlighting the dramatic rise in personal debt among low- to middle-income families over the last decade, focusing on how this growing problem is related to broader changes in the economy and in our public policy. Demos is working with national and state-level advocates to combat predatory lending practices, and to educate policymakers and the public about this increasingly devastating obstacle to family economic security.
- Growing and Protecting the Middle Class: Widely shared middle class prosperity, the signature strength of American society, is in danger. It is increasingly difficult for Americans to reach the middle class and harder for those in the middle class to stay there and feel secure. Demos is working to promote a framework for talking about this problem, as well as promoting new policy ideas to expand and protect the middle class, including: investments in higher education; incentives for home ownership; and, support for income growth.
- Around the Kitchen Table E-Journal: Our new monthly e-journal provides advocates, policymakers and the media with ideas and analysis on how national economic trends in debt, assets, education and income play out around the kitchen tables of individuals and families in America.
Reports and Publications: The Economic Opportunity Program frequently publishes commentary, analysis and research reports. Recent reports include: A House of Cards: Refinancing the American Dream; Millions to the Middle: Three Strategies to Expand the Middle Class; Generation Broke: The Growth of Debt Among Young Adults; Retiring In The Red: The Growth of Debt Among Older Americans; Borrowing to Make Ends Meet: The Growth of Credit Card Debt in the 1990s; and New Opportunities? Public Opinion on Poverty, Income Inequality and Public Policy: 1996-2002.
Public Works: The Demos Center for the Public Sector
For more than two decades, the United States has witnessed an organized assault on the public perception of government effectiveness and integrity. Years of denigration and disinvestments have weakened state governments' capacity to fulfill basic responsibilities and stripped them of needed public support. Yet, expectations of state government continue to expand, particularly as a result of devolution, homeland security initiatives, rising health care needs, demographic pressures, accountability measures (particularly in education) and other new developments. Working in partnership with key players throughout the country, Public Works: The Demos Center for the Public Sector is initiating a deliberate campaign, grounded in the states, to build a vision of state governance for the contemporary context that can restore respect for public service and support for government's protective and supportive capacities. Specific program initiatives include:
- Survey of Public Sector Work: Public Work has undertaken a survey of activities among researchers, think tanks, advocates, organizers, philanthropists, and others that have as their goal rebuilding the public sector and rekindling support among Americans for the role of the public sector. The program expects to publish a review of its findings later this year.
- Effective Communication about Government: Public Works: The Demos Center for the Public Sector is developing its capacity to be a constructive voice on behalf of the public sector and government's role in our society. Toward this end, in partnership with the Council for Excellence in Government (CEG), we are working with the FrameWorks Institute to develop a framework for talking about government in a positive light. With this information, we intend to develop tools that organizations and campaigns across the country can use to shape their messages about government programs, activities, public sector roles and tax and budget issues.
- Public Opinion and the Public Sector: Demos will soon publish a report analyzing existing polling information about the public's view of government and taxation. The goal of this report is to put the polling data on the public's opinion of government and taxes into perspective, going beyond observations of public distrust of government in order to highlight opportunities for regenerating support for the public sector.
- Working with States: Public Works: The Demos Center for the Public Sector is making contact with organizations in a number of states, and will encourage and support campaigns that embody an effort to restore the capacity of state governments to act on citizens' behalf, for instance. These could well include repealing or modifying fiscal and structural handcuffs on budget-making that have been enacted by a number of states over the last 20 years.
Ideas in the Public Debate
Demos is also committed to promoting important new ideas in the public debate:
- Over the past two years, our successful Demos Forum: Ideas for Change event series has established Demos as one of the leading venues for national public policy discussion in New York City, and a place where interesting new ideas are presented and discussed. Housed in our in-office event space, the series features leading scholars, authors, and public policy leaders, and engages a wide range of audiences including media, public officials, business and labor leaders, academics, advocates and philanthropists.
- Demos regularly hosts and co-sponsors a number of projects that aim to expand democracy and foster greater equality. One example is the Building Movement Project, an effort to study and promote ways for non-profit organizations to do more effective advocacy work and encourage young leadership, which is housed at Demos. Another example is the Inequality Matters Conference in June 2004, which explored the poisonous consequences of inequality in our society and the potential for effective action to combat it.
- Demos' Fellows Program offers institutional affiliation as well as communications assistance and support to scholars, writers, and policy experts in key areas, tapping their intellectual resources and encouraging the exchange of ideas to help advance Demos' long-term commitment to promoting new ideas into public discussion. Winter fellows in residence are: Richard Benjamin, Jim Lardner, Leslie McCall, George Packer, Nomi Prins, David Smith and Jennifer Wheary.
For more information about Demos and its program areas, please visit www.demos.org.