Screwed: The Undeclared War against the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It

Here's a bit of wisdom on which ''left'' and ''right'' can easily agree: If you let things go, you'll have to pay for it eventually; and the longer you don't deal with it, the more you'll have to pay. Wait long enough, and you'll pay dearly-when you could have done the right thing all along and at little cost. Take the planet, for example. As every reasonable person and/or group will now admit, this Earth had been gradually heating up since heavy industry began to blacken and enrich the West not long after our founding revolution; and now that trend, for years denied, has started to accelerate, with ever-larger chunks of polar ''permafrost'' dissolving into sea, polar bears and penguins vanishing, floodwaters rising everywhere, and the weather going mad. Although for decades the danger was strenuously veiled by lots of corporate and religious propaganda ....To grasp that change, in short, would be to comprehend our entire history; but certainly one major reason for the breakdown is the great blackout on our own revolutionary origins and founding ideology. We have too long denied, and have too long been denied, the truth of what America is really all about....Today the thrilling old duality of ''left'' and ''right'' appears increasingly irrelevant-now that the Cold War is a memory-and less meaningful with every passing day as we Americans once more face off against the same ferocious atavistic forces that the Constitution was intended to contain, or thwart, forever: the power-lust of those who would be king, the greed of those who wish they were aristocrats, and the relentless malice of those priesthoods that would force their creed on everybody else....In short, the time has come for us to turn to them again and once more study both their work and their example ....If you are one who longs to see this nation once again great with promise, this book will enlighten you-and brace you for the necessary fight.