Hyperbole Was To Lyndon Johnson

Although Our Interests As Citizens Vary, Each One Is An Artery To The Heart That Pumps Life Through The Body Politic, And Each Is Important To The Health Of Democracy.

On The Eve Of The Election Last Month My Wife Judith And I Were Driving Home Late In The Afternoon And Turned On The Radio For The Traffic And Weather. What We Instantly Got Was A Freak Show Of Political Pornography: Lies, Distortions, And Half-truths - Half-truths Being Perhaps The Blackest Of All Lies. They Paraded Before Us As Informed Opinion.

The Consensual Seduction Of The Mainstream Media By And With The Government Is One Of The Most Dangerous Toxins At Work In America Today.

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.

Now Barack Obama, Who Campaigned For Transparency, Is The President Defending Secret Negotiations On New Trade Agreements That Are Largely Being Written By Corporate Lawyers And Lobbyists. He Would Give Corporations The Key To The Treasury While He Gets The Authority To Fast Track Another Hammering Of Working People And The Environment. Yet The Only People Who Get A Real Tongue-lashing From This President's White House Are Progressives Around Town Who Dare To Call Him On The Carpet For Abandoning His Promises.