The Fault Line In American

A Journalist Is Basically A Chronicler, Not An Interpreter Of Events. Where Else In Society Do You Have The License To Eavesdrop On So Many Different Conversations As You Have In Journalism? Where Else Can You Delve Into The Life Of Our Times?

The Most Fundamental Liberal Failure Of The Current Era: The Failure To Embrace A Moral Vision Of America Based On The Transcendent Faith That Human Beings Are More Than The Sum Of Their Material Appetites, Our Country Is More Than An Economic Machine, And Freedom Is Not License But Responsibility.

Hyperbole Was To Lyndon Johnson What Oxygen Is To Life.

Lyndon Johnson Believed The Poor Deserved A Better Life Than The Economy Was Providing Them. He Thought Private Power And Greed Had To Be Checked By A Vibrant Democracy.

Reagan's Story Of Freedom Superficially Alludes To The Founding Fathers, But Its Substance Comes From The Gilded Age, Devised By Apologists For The Robber Barons. It Is Posed Abstractly As The Freedom Of The Individual From Government Control A Jeffersonian Ideal At The Roots Of Our Bill Of Rights, To Be Sure. But What It Meant In Politics A Century Later, And Still Means Today, Is The Freedom To Accumulate Wealth Without Social Or Democratic Responsibilities And License To Buy The Political System Right Out From Everyone Else.