The Quality Of Democracy And

When Certain Causes Become Prairie Fires, Politicians Make Difficult Choices, And Often At The Expense Of Someone Like Jeremiah Wright And Walter Jenkins. That's The Cruel Nature Of American Politics, Where The End Becomes The Consummate Objective, And Sometimes The Means To Get There Come At A Great Price.

Journalists Who Make Mistakes Get Sued For Libel; Historians Who Make Mistakes Get To Publish A Revised Edition.

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.

When We Were Covering The 2008 Campaign I Told My Young African American Colleagues That Despite The Historical Significance Of Victory, Barack Obama Was Going To Break Their Hearts. They Didn't Want To Hear That, And They Refused To Believe It. Eighteen Months Later They Started Dropping By One By One To Say, Sadly: "he Broke Our Hearts." A Couple Of Them Even Wept.

The Interfaith Alliance Has To Become An Ongoing Sustaining And Powerful Movement Whose Interest Is To Prove That Religion Has A Healing Side As Well As A Killing Side, And That Democracy Is The Consequence Of Conscience