Sometimes We Need a Calamity: How to Save the American Experiment

How to Save the American experiment? That’s the question the Yale historian John Fabian Witt asks this week in both a New York Times feature and his just published new book, The Radical Fund. Sometimes, Witt suggests, we need what he describes as a “calamity” to recognize and protect the American experiment in democracy. In the 1920s, the historian reminds us, this happened with the emergence of the Garland Fund, a charitable organization set up in 1922 which spawned many of the most profound economic and civil rights reforms of the mid century. Founded by Charles Garland, a disillusioned yet idealistic Harvard heir who refused his million-dollar inheritance, the Fund brought together unlikely bedfellows—from the ACLU and NAACP to labor unions—creating what Witt calls an “incubator” for progressive change. Drawing striking parallels between then and now, Witt argues that strategic philanthropy and what he calls “cross-movement dialogue” can reinvigorate American democracy in a similarly turbulent age of cultural anxiety, political distrust and violent division. History may not repeat itself, Witt acknowledges, but it rhymes. And the real calamity, he warns, would be the end not of history, but of the almost 250 year-old American experiment in political and economic freedom. * The 1920s-2020s Parallel Is Uncanny: Both eras feature post-pandemic societies, surging economic inequality, restrictive immigration policies, rising Christian nationalism, and disruptive new information technologies. Understanding how America navigated the 1920s crisis without civil war offers crucial lessons for today.* Small Money, Strategic Impact: The Garland Fund operated with just $2 million (roughly $40-800 million in today’s terms)—a fraction of Rockefeller or Carnegie fortunes—yet proved transformative. Success came not from sheer dollars but from bringing together feuding progressive movements (labor unions, civil rights organizations, civil liberties groups) and forcing them into productive dialogue.* Incubators Matter More Than Calamities: While crises like the Great Depression provided energy for change, the Fund created the institutional forms and intellectual frameworks that shaped how that energy was channeled. They pioneered industrial unions, funded the legal strategy behind Brown v. Board of Education, and staffed FDR’s New Deal agencies with their “brain trust.”* Cross-Movement Dialogue Is Transformative: The Fund’s greatest achievement was convening conversations among groups that disagreed fundamentally—labor versus racial justice organizations, communists versus liberals. These uncomfortable alliances produced the cross-racial labor movement and civil rights strategies that defined mid-century progressivism. Today’s left needs similar bridge-building across fractured movements.* We Need New Categories for New Economics: The institutions that saved 1920s democracy—industrial unions, civil rights organizations, civil liberties groups—are each in crisis today. The gig economy, AI, and virtual work demand fresh thinking, not just recycling 1920s solutions. Witt suggests progressives must incubate new organizational forms for 21st-century capitalism, just as the Garland Fund did for industrial capitalism.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe