Bernie Sanders & Cornel West: The radical alliance that could change everything

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80. I agree with you completely.

Chomsky and West are unforgiving critics and bless them for that. But you don't rally masses of voters by being a constant critic, as Richard Rorty explains:

"National pride is to countries what self-respect is to individuals: a necessary condition for self-improvement. Too much national pride can produce bellicosity and imperialism, just as excessive self-respect can produce arrogance. But just as too little self-respect makes it difficult for a person to display moral courage, so insufficient national pride makes energetic and effective debate about national policy unlikely.

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"Those who hope to persuade a nation to exert itself need to remind their country of what it can take pride in as well as what it should be ashamed of. They must tell inspiring stories about episodes and figures in the nation's past -- episodes and figures to which the country should remain true. Nations rely on artists and intellectuals to create images of, and to tell stories about, the national past. Competition for political leadership is in part a competition between differing stories about a nation's self-identity, and between differing symbols of it's greatness." - Richard Rorty. Achieving Our Country. 1997