COMMUNITARIANISM SOLVENCY 64

COMMUNITARIANISM IS BUILDING A POWERFUL SOCIAL MOVEMENT

COMMUNITARIANISM IS EXPERIENCING A CONCEPTUAL GROUNDSWELL IN OUR SOCIETY

INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITARIAN POLICY STUDIES, 2000; The Communitarian Platform,

However, we are heartened by the groundswell of support that our initial efforts have brought to the communitarian perspective. If more and more Americans come forward and join together to form active communities that seek to reinvigorate the moral and social order, we will be able to deal better with many of our communities' problems while reducing our reliance on governmental regulation, controls, and force. We will have a greater opportunity to work out shared public policy based on broad consensus and shared moral and legal traditions. And we will have many more ways to make our society a place in which individual rights are vigilantly maintained, while the seedbeds of civic virtue are patiently nurtured.

COMMUNITARIANISM CAN BE A NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENT TO REVITALIZE SOCIETY

INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITARIAN POLICY STUDIES, 2000; The Communitarian Platform,

To achieve this major renewal and revitalization of public life, to reinstitute the prerequisites for attending to the public interest, requires a major social movement, akin to the progressive movement of the beginning of the century. For even good causes can become special interests if they are not part of such a movement, keeping their strategies and aims in constant dialogue with larger aims and multiple ends. Citizens who care about the integrity of the polity either on the local, state, or national level, should band with their fellows to form a neo-progressive communitarian movement. They should persevere until elected officials are beholden--not to special interests--but only to the voters and to their own consciences.

COMMUNITARIANISM CAN CREATE A NEW SOCIAL FORCE WHICH IS MORE EFFECTIVE THAN INDIVIDUAL OR GOVERNMENT SOLUTIONS

INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITARIAN POLICY STUDIES, 2000; Communitarian

     Communitarians have long stressed the importance of the community as a powerful "third force" operating in the middle terrain between the individual and the government. Community norms can often be more effective than laws in regulating conduct. Indeed, without the support of the community’s "moral voice," laws and law enforcement can often be unavailing. Transforming a high-crime neighborhood into a livable community usually requires more than police action. The community itself must will a change.