The following is an important op-ed by David Brooks, from the NYT of March 19, 2010. He has posited that over the last forty years American society has become an indigestible stew from the  economic forces from the right and from the cultural freedom forces from the left that have caused us to be a society with tremendous social problems on historic time scales. I always find Brooks’ mentality a painfully odd juxtaposition of liberal and conservative elements, but nonetheless, he does have penetratingly clear systemic social intuitions that are worth scratching your head over. In the piece that follows he is at his best form in his stock-in-trade.  I think he has good grist for the mill for Greens, so I heartily recommend that folks read this and post replies.  We are still working out what we mean by our decentralism key value. Here’s hoping Brooks can provide food for thought in this domain.

I thought it important to share this heartening news story from the 3/16/10 issue of Northampton's Hampshire Gazette by staff writer Ben Storrow.  It concerns our state government working the way it should – taking its lead from the upwelling of the grassroots sense of how we should be farming and living in the new era we are entering with peak oil-induced growing energy costs and with growing environmental and economic damage from global warming.  In very truth we now are experiencing a Daniel Shays rebellion out here in the western part of Massachusetts, but this time a practical, slow, and steady rebellion, a rebellion away from corporate food to real food.  With this, corporate politics is sure to give way to real politics  – as sure as night gives way to day.

What makes this story so uplifting for me is that in the same story we have Sen. Stan Rosenberg D-Amherst backing a project that is supported by a conventional, conservative farmer in Hadley, who in turn quotes Bill McKibben's 1,400 miles from farm to plate mantra without even knowing it.  These ideas are certainly starting to percolate.  The next phase is to give these ideas a name, and have that name on everyone's lips:  relocalization.