About
Politicolor: Political life in full color
Politicolor is most interested in questions of civic life. No simple proposition, civic life requires us to navigate a complex web of relationships with one another, our government and our constitutional principles. What we understand of humanity, civilized society and nature itself may guide our course but, in the end, we each weigh these considerations and decide for ourselves what matters, what it requires and what to do next.
Politicolor provides a space for citizens to share these decisions and their work to support civic life. Headlines bemoan apathetic, uninformed and disengaged citizens but that’s about little more than voting in the latest election and remembering the names of Supreme Court Justices. Politicolor’s proposition is simple: politics is inescapable. It’s embedded in every discussion of who we are, what we value and how we resolve conflict. Politicolor is committed to recognizing these everyday moments of political life.
By no means a closed community, a core group of our authors and readers have had the opportunity to study at the Center for Civic Education’s National Academy or an NEH institute at Madison’s Montpelier. This work with Professor Will F. Harris, II from the University of Pennsylvania provides a thought provoking structure to our discussions where the considerations discussed above (nature, humanity, civilized society, one people, their constitution and government) are transformed into seven colors and a series of boxes. These learning communities persist online with questions and ideas that concern a much wider audience. If Google makes us stupid, and that’s a big if, Politicolor seeks to dwell in the “complex, dense and ‘cathedral-like’ structure” of political life.
You’ll see familiar names here. Even if our media and politicians rarely recognize the ideas of Madison, the Antifederalists, Aristotle, Cicero, Hobbes or Locke, Politicolor continues to recognize their work in our own.
Since Politicolor’s beginning in 2007, several themes have emerged:
