Independents Day: Awakening the American Spirit

Author and journalist Dobbs (War on the Middle Class), best known for the snub-nosed populism of his nightly CNN news program Lou Dobbs Tonight, presents a thoughtful case against American political strategies past and present, encouraging citizens to ""live every day as independent day."" Pointing to the ""near-epidemic levels"" of ""business scandals, Capitol Hill ethics violations, White House spin, and corporate layoffs,"" Dobbs concludes that ""disregard for the will of the people"" is the new status quo among the government and business elite. Contending that ""our government rationalizes away the common good and our national interest,"" the author unfurls tales of partisanship, unfathomable plunges into debt, the ramifications of cheap labor, a stomach-lurching account of who owns what we generally regard as our public highways, and ""the Pontius Pilate way the government washes its hands of involvement in those matters it has assigned to contractors."" Issues range from immigration to trade policy to the poor state of public education and the celebrity takeover of news media. Dobbs' polemic is a four-alarm wake-up call meant to jar America's populace into reclaiming their values and voice; presenting a culmination of disturbing trends that may soon relegate ""our national sovereignty to history's dustbin,"" Dobbs's troubling news will give any citizen much to ponder.