Thoughts on Last Night's Speech

Good speech by Hillary Clinton last night, I say. There were some sentiments there that I wish I'd heard more of during the run up to things. I think the best line in it was "This won't be easy. Progress never is."

If you missed the speech, it's worth checking out. You can find the full text here.

In conversations with friends and relatives over the past several years about politics, one of the things I've told them about my views - because that fear of taxes pervades American politics in such a strange and profound way - is that I don't mind taxes if they're paying for things I need. I'm willing to pay, to pay a little extra if it helps, so that there are services out there. I don't expect that the things I want in society will fall from the sky or that the country I believed I lived in just happens. Or that it, if it ever existed, it wasn't a rare thing that needed to be cultivated and cared for.

One of the interesting things about how politics - and religion - has worked in the U.S. is the strange relationship between earning money and helping those around you. It's funny to see what religion becomes when filtered through capitalism. And it is equally funny to realize that, like it or not, neither are systems one can completely reject, no matter the objections.

What I'd like to see in these discussions, in elections, in the world in general maybe is a little less of the golden age mentality. How do you "take back the country you love" if it was an ideal? Doesn't it make things more interesting if we think of it that way anyhow, as something that hasn't been reached but that must constantly be reached for?