I'm a big believer in debate and difference of opinion.

Even though I'm appalled when racism surfaces, and I personally don't agree with certain policy solutions and a lot of what they believe in, as someone who is very concerned about reinvigorating democracy the Tea Parties are an answer to what I asked for.

What, after all, is the narrative of the American Dream? It was a discourse formulated between the 1880s and the 1920s in the United States during the great waves of migration and expansion and reforms of the Progressive Era.

The Tea Party is not monolithic. There is a battle between people who care about liberty and the Constitution and the Republican Establishment who is trying to take ownership of it and redirect it for its own purposes.

Democracy is disruptive. Around the world, peaceful protesters are being demonised for this, but there is no right in a democratic civil society to be free of disruption. Protesters ideally should read Gandhi and King and dedicate themselves to disciplined, long-term, non-violent disruption of business as usual - especially disruption of traffic.

I don't want people to be suicidal. I want them to be energized and angry.

The human beings at the helm of the new nation [USA], whatever their limitations [slave owners, anti-democracy], were truly revolutionary. The theory of liberty born in that era, the seed of the idea, was perfect.More important, the idea itself carried within it the moral power to correct the contradictions in its execution that were obvious from the very birth of the new nation.