Keen On

One of the most painful lessons of the Kirk assassination is that conservatives are running rings around progressives in political mobilization - especially of young Americans. So how to make the left relevant in America again? For the philosopher Michael Brownstein, co-author of Somebody Should Do Something, progressives need to learn to lose both cleverly and loudly. And they can learn from NRA on this. Despite holding positions unpopular with most Americans, Brownstein acknowledges that the NRA created a powerful social identity around gun ownership and leveraged it for decades of legislative victories through masterful political strategy and organization. Drawing from social science research on collective action, Brownstein argues that highly theatrical defeats—like the recent Texas Democrats’ walkout or John Lewis’ bloody fate on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965—can catalyze change by forcing opponents into untenable positions. The key isn’t winning every battle, but making individual actions visible eno