TLP Weekend Edition (November 1-2, 2025)

What we're reading and checking out.

TLP pup Darcy wants to know if the end of daylight savings on Sunday means she has to wait an hour for morning oats. (Author photo)

📖 “The Techno-Humanist Manifesto: A new philosophy of progress for the 21st century,” by Jason Crawford. Curious about the progress movement? This detailed 11-part manifesto by one of the movement’s leading lights and founder of the Roots of Progress Institute covers all the big issues the movement is trying to grapple with—and the vision of the future they want us to embrace. Highly recommended.

[W]e need an inspiring vision of the future to motivate the effort and strife that progress requires. Science, technology, and the economy require continual investment, and each new generation must receive and carry the torch. Inventors and entrepreneurs of the Industrial Revolution were motivated by the power of steam and all that it could be applied to; those of the late 19th century were enthralled by electricity; the scientists and engineers in the late 20th century who went to NASA had grown up on Star Trek. If we are to make progress today, it will be driven by technologists who are fascinated with the potential for technologies such as artificial intelligence or genetic engineering. We must believe in the future in order to build it.

Fear and skepticism of progress put us at risk of stagnation and decline. The defeatism that arose in the 20th century about the challenges of progress does not give us a way forward. We need a new philosophy of progress for the 21st century, and beyond.

The time for that philosophy is now. Stagnation and sclerosis have become too painful to ignore.

Key economic metrics such as GDP and total factor productivity have been slowing down for decades. Even though computing technology is still racing ahead, other fields are lagging behind. Manufacturing, construction, transportation, and energy have seen no new general-purpose technologies since the 1960s—contrast with the period 1880–1940, which saw the invention of electrical power, synthetic plastics, the assembly line, the automobile and the airplane. Nuclear power was once on track to be the dominant source of world electricity; instead, it plateaued at about 10%. The Concorde was grounded, and the planes we fly today actually go a bit slower than the jets of the 1960s. The Apollo program was canceled; no human has left low-Earth orbit since 1972.

📚 Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes, by John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira. There are several recent reports and articles out about the Democrats’ malaise that we highly recommend. But as a gentle reminder, TLP had four years of posts leading up to the 2024 presidential election warning Democrats about the dangers of their party brand, their out-of-touch policy agenda, and their reliance on college-educated voters at the expense of the working class. Even better, John and Ruy laid out all of this—along with a path forward for Democrats—in superb detail in their book published one year before the election.

The America of today is vastly different from the America of the 1930s, but what the Democrats need today is a general approach to politics that is similar to that of the New Deal liberals. The New Deal liberals were liberal, progressive, and social democratic in their economic views, dedicated to creating a better balance of power between labor and business and security against poverty, unemployment, disease, and old age, but by today’s standards, the New Deal Democrats were moderate and even small-c conservative in their social outlook. They extolled “the American way of life” (a term popularized in the 1930s); they used patriotic symbols like the “Blue Eagle” to promote their programs. In 1940, Roosevelt’s official campaign song was Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.” Under Roosevelt, Thanksgiving, Veterans Day, and Columbus Day were made into federal holidays. Roosevelt turned the annual Christmas tree lighting into a national event. Roosevelt’s politics were those of “the people” (a term summed up in Carl Sandburg’s 1936 poem “The People, Yes”) and of the “forgotten American.”

The Democrats need to follow this example. They need to press economic reforms that benefit the working and middle classes. But to get a hearing on those promises, they must first declare a truce and find a middle ground in today’s culture war between Democrats and Republicans so that they can once again become the party of the people.

Since Ruy and John are not ones to toot their own horn, we’ll do it for them—buy and read this book!

📰 “A Republic, but Can We Keep It?,” by Peggy Noonan. In her WSJ column, Ronald Reagan’s former speechwriter reflects on the events of this year, especially the past few months. And while she is not down on the future of the republic just yet, she suggests there’s reason to “wonder and worry” about it.

Ben Franklin, famously asked by a woman on the street in Philadelphia what sort of government the Constitutional Convention had wrought, is reported to have said, “A republic, if you can keep it.” The reply was wry and factual but also a warning: Republics are hard to maintain.

Are we maintaining ours?

Democrats worry about our democracy. Is that the area of greatest recent erosion? I doubt it. Donald Trump really won in 2016, you can trust those numbers, and he really lost in ’20, and really won in ’24. Your governor won, your congressman—you can pretty much trust the numbers even factoring in the mischief in any system built by man. When shocks happen—“I just want to find 11,780 votes”—the system has still held. The state of Georgia told the president to take a hike in 2020. If you’ve spent much of your adult life deriding the concept of states’ rights, that moment would have complicated your view.

It isn’t our democracy that I worry about, it is our republic. That’s where we’re seeing erosion, that’s the thing we could lose…Are we maintaining our republic? Is our equilibrium holding? The last nine months a lot of lines seem to have been crossed—in the use of the military, in redirecting the Justice Department to target the president’s enemies, real and perceived. There are many areas in which you’ve come to think: Isn’t the executive assuming powers of the Congress here? Why is Congress allowing this?

🎞️ Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. Biopics aren’t for everyone. But if you like Bruce Springsteen, and especially if you like the stripped-down Boss on Nebraska, you’ll enjoy this new movie. Jeremy Allen White of The Bear fame does a fantastic job playing a young Springsteen in the throes of dark times before he became a worldwide superstar with the release of Born in the U.S.A. in 1984. There are great shots of Asbury Park, and White’s singing is top-notch. In conjunction with the movie release, there’s also a fascinating four-record box set of Nebraska out featuring remastered tracks, live cuts, and the famous electric versions of the record that Bruce rejected in favor of his homespun approach.

🎸 George Best, Bizarro, and Seamonsters, by The Wedding Present. This year marks the 40th anniversary of these rock legends from Leeds, fronted by mastermind David Gedge since 1985. The first three records represent their “warp-speed take on jangly, bittersweet indie pop” quite well. As John Peel famously quipped, “The boy Gedge has written some of the best love songs of the ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ era. You may dispute this, but I’m right and you’re wrong!”

“The Weddoes” are planning a 2026 North American tour you won’t want to miss. They are fantastic live.

In the meantime, enjoy the ripping guitar and wall of sound on one of our favorite tracks, “Kennedy.”