Deferred? NO, DEFORMED like 'health' "care" and soon to come from the DEM "debt" panel, mortal attacks on US citizens' Social Security and Medicare: Baracking down from MLK of human kindness King to Obamanible corporate clown!

King:
"War is the greatest plague that can affect humanity; it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it."

Who knows, maybe the CIA gave the nod for his assasination.

The dream is being achieved as we type. Just not in the way Dr. King and most of us might have hoped or expected. Equality will be achieved by driving the bulk of the population down to disenfranchised, leaving only the powerful at the head of the corporate structure and its state along with an ever shrinking entourage of technologists, accountants and middle management who while much closer will also remain above the mass. A broad equality will be achieved, equally prostrate on the floor of society under the heels of the few beneficiaries of the free market religion(which is something different from what the adherents incorrectly attribute to Adam Smith), the state church of the corporate state.

One of our problems is that the mobs of moderately endowed middle classes are perfectly satisfied with mediocrity and status quo cycles and methods. They are happy to let their corporate daddies and mommies have the upper hand as long as their mediocrity is not threatened - and then when it is, it's not corporate mommy or daddy's fault, it's Washington....it's a shell game, and it's fixed by mommy and daddy.

"The vast inequalities of income weaken a society's sense of mutual concern," Arrow said. "... The sense that we are all members of the social order is vital to the meaning of civilization."

Great article...great words.

I remember the days when new interstate highways would bypass towns that used to be stops along an old highway system. The result was that those towns would dry up and nearly die. Economically, that is what is happening to the US. The greed-driven financial sector has totally supplanted the production sector in growing the economy. Most all meaningful work has either been outsourced, or is in progress of outsourcing. Americans drank ReaganAide and have destroyed their own collective bargaining mechanisms. And now they have their hate-driven culture or racist murderous rage.

Americans have cheerfully destroyed their own education system as well. They have gleefully sidestepped single payer or other non-profit health systems in favor of a greed-based health system while happily killing their own families via a sub- third world health delivery system or oil wars.

And Americans like it because they love killing and greed. L-O-V-E it. As much as ancient Romans loved their slaughter house circuses. Americans love war; hate the "general welfare." That's why Bush was elected 2 times on war and torture, and nobody blinked an eye on the trillions spent to his war profiteer buddies.

America's Christianity is based upon greed, oppression and prestige. In fact, Anti-abortion Pre-lifers couldn't care less about killing people since most like war and the death penalty. No, they just want to see women oppressed and distressed. Christianity is about vindictive retribution; not sola gratia.

That is, and will be, America. A pathologically sick backwater hate driven town that soon will be bypassed by the rest of the world on the way of adding another footnote to that failed states from which civilization will get yet another cautionary tale.

The very fundamental issues of poverty and social equity never get addressed because both parties collude in negligence. Business lobbies no doubt put most of their money on politicians and the party that will do most for them, on grounds if both political ideology and shared cultural outlook; but they also take care to put enough money on malleable elements of the other party, too, so they have enough leverage to water down resolutions that "go too far". Hence this healthcare package, and any other that everyone from MLK to Obama may call for that makes any fundamental difference to the lot of the majority.

I applaud Dr Christoferson's suggestion for some kind of identity for people who comment on the articles on Truthout. On the other hand, the anonymous i.d. allows those who feel less than capable to respond but who also feel strongly the need for fair play , respect and dignity across the board for the work they do and how they do it - these people, whatever their occupations and lives, need to be encouraged to speak out for themselves. This article from Bill Moyers and Michael Winship is so truthful and so uplifting . It should ignite a growing desire for tolerance, for right action and true feeling for fairness .

This article expresses such poignant material, it is a shame that it is littered with so many silly little words like "greed" and others. Articles that express things of great importance are hard for a lot of people to take seriously when they read like something written by a hacky sack player in a state college quad.

It is great for a reader like myself... but this message needs to be related to a much broader audience and at least masking the silliness serves a broader purpose than making it palatable for a smaller group.

Thank you for your comment, Robert Pool.
We share the same dream of really equal opportunity and social justice. MLK might have gone farther. I believe that a free market re-regulated along the lines established by "the two Roosevelts" might work. Might work only if accompanied by Barack Obama's velvet revolution with massive governmental spending on national infrastructure, environmental integrity, education and jobs. The slavering, drooling wolves of the Right are pursuing him even now with their scarcely concealed racism and sexism.
Thanks for your comment.

Listen up, "Dan'l": If by some terrible act of the gods you turn out to be my son, you're on notice that you're close to being disowned. Greed is not a silly word (snorkel! Snorkel is a silly word); and a lot of hackysack players in State College quads are about the business of educating themselves (and learning balance). When you have something substantive to add in T/O comments about the deeper issues of inequality in America addressed by Dr. King, you come back . . . whether or not your my blood-kin.

wow, awesome article.Thanks Again. Really Cool.