Resumo de Topic Of The Book

Perhaps more than any other time in our recent history, we need a new kind of politics , one that pull us together as Americans. That's the topic of this book: how we might begin the process of changing our politics and our civic life. Thins isn't to say that I know exactly how to do it. I don't. Although I discuss in each chapter a number of our most pressing policy challenges, and suggest in abroad strokes the path. I believe we should follow, my treatment of the issue is often partial and incomplete. I offer no unifying theory of the American government,nor do these pages provide a manifesto for action, complete with charts and graphs, timetables and ten-points plans. Instead what I offer is something more modest: personal reflections on those values and ideals that have led me to public life, some thoughts on the ways that our current political discourse unnecessarily divides us and my own best assessment-base on my experience as a senator and lawyer, husband and father, Christian ans skeptic-of the ways we can ground our politics in the nation of a common good. Let me be more specific about how the book is organized. Chapter one takes stock of our recent political history and tries to explain some of the sources for today's bitter partisanship. In Chapter two, I discuss those common values that might serve as the foundation for a new political consensus. Chapter three explores the constitution not just as a source of individual rights,but also as a means of organizing a democratic conversation around our collective future. In Chapter four, I try to convey some of the institutional forces-money,media,interest groups,politician. And in the remaining five chapters, I suggest how we move beyond our divisions to effectively tackle concrete families, the racial and religious tensions within the body politic, and the transnational threats-from terrorism to pandemic-that gather beyond our shores. I suspect that some reader may find my presentation of these issues to be insufficiently balanced.To this accusation, I stand guilty as charge. I am a democrat, after all; my view as on most topics correspond more closely to the editorial pages of the New York Times that those of the Wall Street Journal. I am angry about policies that consistently favor the wealthy and powerful over averages American, and insist that government has an important role in opening up opportunity to all. I believe in free speech, whether politically correct or politically incorrect, and I am suspicious of using government to impose any body's religious beliefs--including my own--on nonbelievers. Furthermore, I am a prisoner of my own biography: I can't help but view the American experience through the lens of a black man of mixed heritage, forever mindful of how generations of people who looked like me were subjugate and stigmatized, and the subtle and not so subtle ways that race and class continue to shape our lives.

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