Finally, a network for security progressives — the National Security Network — is up and running. It seeks to bridge the divide between the foreign policy experts and politicians in Washington aka “wonks” and local community leaders and the general public. An affiliated organization provides a communications hub where you can sign up and discuss ideas.

Good stuff. My sadly neglected March 2005 masterpiece “Disconnected” was largely about the need for more such bridge-building institutions to create a progressive movement capable of doing the politics of national security in, to use some military jargon, a full-spectrum manner featuring copious quantities of jointness. Relatedly, it’s good to see that the New America Foundation has recently hosted a couple of events — including one going down this afternoon — seeking to foster some constructive debate among progressives as to what our general foreign policy orientation should be.

It’s a little bit miscast as a response to Tony Judt’s broad-brush assertion that American liberals as a whole have failed to oppose George W. Bush, but this manifesto by Bruce Ackerman and Todd Gitlin and signed by many other worthies is good stuff nonetheless. It really strikes me as more of a response to the incredibly foolish “New American Liberalism” statement than to anything Judt wrote, as such.

I am, as a general matter, pro-manifesto:

• The Communist Manifesto
• The Cyborg Manifesto
• The Futurist Manifesto

The more, the merrier, says I.