conservatism

The story starts off predictably enough for a grandiose adventure: a wizard, a prophecy, an unwitting hero.  Emmet is just a model construction worker, living his city life to the tee by following every rule in the book.  He is manically happy just to be doing it right: greeting his alarm clock with a smile, doing some calisthenics, watching his favorite sitcom before heading out for an overpriced coffee and a fulfilling day on the job.  He feels like he has friends, that he's part of something.  Then a mysterious woman who's obviously not playing by the rules leads him to fall down an…
A recent question posed by NY Times columnist demonstrates just how far to the Palinist right our political and social discourse has shifted: I always wondered why Howard Zinn was considered a radical. (He called himself a radical.) He was an unbelievably decent man who felt obliged to challenge injustice and unfairness wherever he found it. What was so radical about believing that workers should get a fair shake on the job, that corporations have too much power over our lives and much too much influence with the government, that wars are so murderously destructive that alternatives to…