America has always been the beacon of hope for the rest of the world precisely because it is and always was a progressive nation. All of the major reforms associated with curbs on a formerly unregulated private sector began or were developed here: trust busting, 8 hour workdays, the 40 hour week, child labor laws, union representation, worker safety and health inspections, I could go on, but you know the drill as well as I do. Now we add the environment, women's rights, gay rights to our list of triumphs. Even the peculiarly American racial problem is being dealt with in an unprecedented fashion.

Of course, every reform now accepted has been fought and resisted by the forces of reaction. Do you think they're going to stop now? Even Abolition was obstructed and delayed by appeals to freedom and state's rights and the potential damage it would wreak on the economy. It's all part of a historical process that is inevitable and predictable as society becomes more complex and interrelated and the general level of information and education of the population rises. The only alternative they offer is oligarcy and plutocracy and a free market which is about as unrealistic and utopian as the socialist worker's paradise the other side of the aisle tried to sell us.

There will be setbacks, and there have been exceptions, and sometimes we overreact and are excessive. But the general trend is in one direction, and even our last disastrous little relapse with doctrinaire ideological conservativism is part of the dialectic too. As for my conservative friends, I can only offer them the same advice they were so eager to give me a few decades ago: "Love it or leave it."