Why this journal, Vermont Commons? And why now? Vermonters, Americans—indeed, all the world—stand at a widening divide. Not between red and blue, right and left, conservative and liberal, capitalist and socialist, and other such worn political coinage. No, we stand at a truly immense divide: that between our past and our future. Behind us, an experiment in democracy whose energies are still robust, but whose framework—the modern nation state—teeters in all its towering immensity. Behind us stand the great achievements of the Modernist era, molded by one of history’s great forces: centralization. Raw measures of power—governmental, military, scientific, economic, monetary, corporate—have reached levels of magnitude inconceivable a mere generation ago.