A book to be read:

Moyers: 'Democracy in America Is a Series of Narrow Escapes, and We May Be Running Out of Luck' | Democracy and Elections | AlterNet:
Democracy in America is a series of narrow escapes, and we may be running out of luck. The reigning presumption about the American experience, as the historian Lawrence Goodwyn has written, is grounded in the idea of progress, the conviction that the present is "better" than the past and the future will bring even more improvement. For all of its shortcomings, we keep telling ourselves, "The system works."

Now all bets are off