We progressive liberals are guilty of a set of no-win contradictions. We accuse the current administration of a mad cowboy agenda devoid of the ability to respectfully negotiate any situation while wielding a mighty sword from an inflatable pedestal ourselves accepting no compromise. On the other hand, our liberal politicians enter the circus evangelizing against corporate politics and election buying while doing what's necessary to raise the $7m required to even run a modestly successful congressional race. The latter, despite its inevitability, often comes back to haunt anyone running as an *outsider. What to do? Can you reform without living the contraction? Can you follow through and be consistent without the politically suicidal rhetoric (and reality) of invoking outright revolution?

I found all these issues at play in a very enlightening article on Barack Obama, the superstar Illinois Jr. Senator. Having cast a vote that put him in office, I was there for the gloriously humanistic ascension of a young light breaking through the shadows of clichéd and institutionalized representation to become one of the most appealing and celebrated progressives today. The part-story-part-interview feature shows us the dizzying world of conflicted interests that condemns everyone to impurities in our modern political values battleground. I highly recommend reading the article, and I'll finish here by extracting a few storylines that do offer great hope, not in politics but in some of the people who may also be referred to as politicians. The article was written by Ken Silverstein and I'll quote the author directly.

“Obama complained of an American culture that ‘discourages empathy,’ in which those in power blame poverty on people who are ‘lazy or weak of spirit’ and believe that ‘innocent people being slaughtered and expelled from their homes halfway around the world are somebody else's problem.’...ignore those voices, ‘not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate than you, although I think you do have that obligation...but primarily because you have that obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. It's only when you hitch yourself up to something bigger than yourself that you realize your true potential.’ ”

That's for all my libertarian friends.

Obama also speaks to the amount of capital required to run for office and the related special interest peddling. His solution hints at public funding of elections with free political advertising—ideas I've been wanting for years for someone to put out there.