"So, isn't NPR being more truthful in not relying on this myth that "objective truths" play some role in our lives?"

-- steven andresen

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The NPR is being truthful in subtly admitting that they aren't dedicated to being truthful?

What courage!

None of my direct ancestors ever immigrated to the U.S. One fought on the beach at Breed's Hill, a cousin of a direct ancestor was killed at Lexington. The other side of the family arrived in William Penn's Quaker Colony in the early 1700's.

The Fourth of July is for celebrating Independence, hence the name. It is for celebrating those inalienable rights all men are "endowed by their Creator" with, and the freedom from tyranny to which the Founders pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. I can't think of a better way to celebrate it than to call attention to those latter day Americans who can't remember how inalienable they are, who practice exactly what the Founders rebelled against, as if they've taken a collective bath in the River Lethe. I'm glad Glenn wrote this article on this day, and most of my ancestors who were around in 1776 would be damned glad he wrote it, too.

If you are so hot on us living in different countries, you can leave. There isn't another country on the globe that would offer me dual citizenship based on my ancestry.

If the blatant failure of Obama to even attempt to live up to any more than the tiniest, tiniest fraction of his campaign promises doesn't teach progressives a lesson, I fear nothing will.

Well, you're right, of course, to an extent. But really Americans of our generation should have learned that by 1996, after we continued to bomb the hell out of Iraq and headed toward new territories to flex our military muscle. If you ask me, what was the worst element of the Clinton years was neo-liberalism, which saw the autonomy and the economic viability of non-first world states decline to a nightmarish degree. Even if we weren't at war, we would be impoverishing and killing with our economic policies.

That leaves the question: where to go and how? Certainly, there was a time when you could make the argument that voting for fake progressives was the problem. But the coming and going of Ralph Nader, the Green Party and the Ron Paul phenomenon, pretty much proved that there's no there there. There's no way to build up to a political party that challenges the two party system via steps--given the nature of politics, if a party loses horribly in several back to back elections, its basically finished [though it can re-emerge with its losing qualities scrubbed...as well as its raison d'etre]. I'm not saying Nader or Paul deserved to lose, but they just couldn't compete in an extra-legal election process based on corruption and extortion.

That leaves us with the question of where to go from here. The idea that we're at some kind of never-before-seen crossroads of democracy is not a position I subscribe to, though it has been a popular rallying call for the past few years. Things have been fucked here for decades, and when we haven't been active in killing and torture, we've been funding it and enabling it through proxies.

I voted for Obama for several reasons;

1. that there needed to be at least a symbolic break with the past eight years. Despite the fact that Democrats offer very little change from the Republicans, voting in a Republican administration after eight years of xenophobic Christian rule of man dogma would be unforgivable. As Glenn observed, with an ostensible democratic process, we are the government--we are not some clerically-oppressed regime that the world will feel sorry when we elect strident hill-billies. The world sees that as our national character. More importantly so do our children.

2. That amplifying our national discourse on race and ethnicity, and what constitutes being American could only be a positive event, with an impact similar to that of de-segregation in the South, but with the added benefit that it asks Americans to question the bigoted way our American discourse views other peoples around the world.

3. That the actual changes that Obama might be inclined to bring were also important. These include a focus on science and empirical data in the areas of our health and technology sectors, rather than weird Christian pseudo-science. The protection of rights to abortion, the survival of government subsidies and appreciation for the arts and education, the survival of our universities and the funding to access them. Unified competence in dealing with state economies--especially important to me, as our state government's malfeasance over the last few years is about to cost me my Cal Grant. Reasoned nominees to the Supreme Court and lower courts.

There are other reasons, all what people might call small, but they are important differences that we take for granted. I think Obama clearly broadcasted the elements of his coming administration with his vote on FISA before the election. No one should have been confident in those kinds of changes from ANY of the viable candidates on the books--Edwards, Clinton, etcetera; so that certainly wasn't a reason not to vote for Obama.

This isn't an advertisement to vote for the lesser of two evils, but given that not voting is useless and voting for a thirdy party not effective with our current structure...WHAT DO YOU PROPOSE?

I think one of the worst lessons people learned from history was that MLK, Ghandi, etcetera were unique figures in the course of events. That none of us would ever be able to figure out what to do, where to go; and that, of course, all of these accomplishments are the work of one lone figure; and, it obviously hides the fact that all of the change we see today began at the community level with individuals who are largely forgotten to history...look up the names E.D. Nixon and Jo Ann Robinson if you want to see how our lame we've kept track of our inheritance of resistance as Americans.

Really, I'm urging you to do whatever it is you think needs to be done, not just to wait for someone else to come up with it.