Provocative Little Platoons
ResPublica's Blog launches Monday 15th February
One of our finest 'provocation pieces' is pictured opposite: John Milton's 1643 pamphlet 'The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce: Restor'd to the Good of Both Sexes, From the Bondage of Canon Law.' From there to here is nearly four hundred years, but there is little difference between the thrust and parry of the battle of ideas then and now, or the clear glow of genius then and now. There is, however, one big difference between then and now: the forum in which the wider battle between mind and passion takes place.
Today, an array of great blogs blogs provide an open venue for people of different political stripes, hues and opinions to share, defend and fight for their ideas. Today, an array of good think-tanks enrich that debate, by using evidence in an original or sophisticated way - and so showing how the world is - or by offering a perceptive, inquisitive, distinctive sense of how the world ought to be. Yet what appears to be missing is a successful combination of the two.
Which is why, two months on from the launch of our think tank, we will launch ResPublica's Blog on Monday February 15th.
Great things happen when people come together. Where would that irascible, brilliant - yet increasingly blind - old liberal, Milton, have been without his much put-upon aides and his beleaguered kin, who wrote down his verse as he spoke it from memory, word for word. Verse so rich and perfect because of the lucid separation of blind genius - yet useless and lost to time were it not for the simple, human kindnesses of that little platoon around him?
Over the coming weeks, we will invite some of the finest thinkers across business, Government and in civil society to help develop our vision of a society of little platoons; a civic state after the manner of Burke and Disraeli; an associative society of our own, in this place. The only remaining thing to say at this stage is: what on Earth should we name this blog of ours?