Excellent blog.  I think you really laid out some important questions and points.  This is exactly the kind of discussion we all need to be having.  I hope it can remain civil. 

I haven't watched the video yet (but I plan to), but I wanted to bring up something that first sprung to mind.  That is, as your title puts out there: how badly do we want it.  Another way of phrasing that is how much are we willing to sacrifice for it.  It is called a struggle for justice, etc because it is a struggle.  And a struggle requires sacrifice, which in my personal dictionary means letting go of that which one wants to truly grasp tight upon and grasping that which one wants to truly push away.  For instance, while I do work to fight poverty and such, I get a decent salary, etc.  All things considered, I'm not making a real sacrifices on this front.

Also, since it is a struggle, we don't know how will it end.  There is a quote by Vaclav Havel that I always carried around with me during those days when I was taking it to the streets and logging roads and corporate headquarters:

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.

To keep on keeping on even when things seem to be going backwards and getting worse, to continue to make the sacrifices over and over again when success is not guaranteed is hardest thing to do.  Personally, I broke. I burned out.  There are a lot of reasons (excuses) (justifications), a lot of changes in views and notions. 

I remember one rally towad the end when a lot of the few people who said they would show up didn't.  Me and a couple of the other organizers sitting there among the signs that had no one to hold them up, speechless, cold and defeated.

But I know deep down I walked away because part of me placed my own comfort, my own well-being ahead of other living beings.  What I wanted for the world didn't really change at all.  There were just other things I wanted for me that became more of the priority.  I loss the will to make the sacrifices.

I found this interview with Hedges to be very disappointing.  Apparently he is an afficianado of Chomskyan "anarchism" or "libertarian socialism" - a deeply confused and immature form of political thought whose destructive popularity on the left over the past four decades is partly responsible for two generations of progressive weakness, failure and lost ground.

The global labor movement of the 19th and 20th centuries was not about "individualism".  It was about social solidarity and social justice.  The success of the democratic socialist and social democratic movements of Europe, along with the New Deal in the United States did not happen because people exalted individualism and individual freedom above all other values.  These movements prioritized social values and a commitment to the common good.

It is impossible to achieve enduring social change, or to build a more just, more equal and more progressively prosperous society if one insists on permanent "suspicion of all forms of power" and "holding structures of power" at arms length.  The aim of progressive renewal of our society is to replace the hierarchical structure of power dominated by unequally distributed wealth and unaccountable corporate command by a more democratic and egalitarian power structure.  Democratic and egalitarian aspirations are just as much need of institutionalized power structures to achieve their vision of a more equal and just society as are any other political outlooks.

If one's political ideals exalt powerlessness and embrace the fear and rejection of political power, then one has no just cause for complaint if those ideals are never put into actual social and political effect.

Without energetic governance and the rule of law, the unregulated freedom of the most self-assertive individuals naturally channels itself into narcissistic and self-aggrandizing schemes of explotation, self-differentiation and domination.  It takes hard and vigilant work to build and maintain a society of democratic equals, and democrats and social justice advocates can't shy away from building political and governmental power, or from using that power to advance the common good, and protect their society from the assaults of predatory individualists.

It is not possible to exalt in a coherent way both "the rule of law" and "rebellion".   Hedges outlook seems pathetically confused and fundamentally incoherent.

Libertarianism is not as socialist, democratic or social democratic ideal.   "Libertarian socialism" is a contradition in terms and an expression of unresolved moral and emotional conflict.  And progressives cannot move forward in building a new and better if so many in our ranks are held back by people whose moral development is arrested in this kind of permanent adolescent "anarchism".  Anarchism is not a political philosophy of grown-ups who have achieved a mature emotional and intellectual reconciliation of dreams and reality.

American society provides an amazing abundance of liberty by any historical standard.  We really don't need more liberation from each other.  We need more cooperation, solidarity, communalism, socially organized action and re-commitment to social and community obligations.

Ask not how you can be more liberated from your fellow Americans.  Ask how you can build new cooperative and committed bonds with your fellow Americans and work with with them to build a better world.

This all depends on a person's world view. How I interpret things or the course of action I choose to take depends on the template I use for understanding the world. And that varies from person to person.  Example:  I am a vegetarian and a big supporter in the better treatment of animals. I am not a member of PETA however because I do not understand nor agree with many of their tactics. Instead of protesting the treatment of animals I engage in animal rescue. I stop on the freeways and have rescued many animals or I check on animals to see if they need assistance (unfortunately most of them are deceased from injury before you get to them). Because of these actions I have had others start to do this as well or they know they can call me to let me know if there is a situation that needs to be looked into.  I also volunteer at a couple of wildlife organizations to help protect wildlife, rescue them, and to educate the public. My actions are less in your face and more dealing with the practical day to day issues. So who has the better way of dealing with this?  People who do as I do or PETA? Neither. We both play a role that fits our world view and how we feel we can contribute to this world and make it a better place. 

PETA does a better job of keeping the issue of animal rights in the whole publics eyes. My MO is a more moderate stance. Not moderate in label so much as in world view. I tend to look at things from a more practical and less extreme point of view. That doesn't make my pov better than someone who engages in more extreme language and actions but my pov is just as valuable. I can effect change in this more subtle manner but I would fail miserably if I acted in a more extreme manner. It is not who I am.

I realize that once politics enters into the equation our philosophical differences start to seem insurmountable. But that would be a shame if we didn't realize that the variety of thoughts and views here actually give the big picture far better than one person's world view. What I described above was about me and how I see and do things but I understand that while this is right for me others have a different path. Looking forward to continuing to try to understand other's views (even if they sometimes frustrate me...a lot).

Moral of this story: I don't see Liberal progressive values successfully being reduced into a simple narrative.

Fine post stars.

Me, I've entered a "tragic" mode as far as the USA is concerned. Tragic in the sense that the hero, a great individual, is condemned to a bad ending because of a mistake or a character defect and that this contrast between greatness and inevitable disaster is what makes for the grandeur of tragedy.

America's great defect, character flaw and mistake is slavery and its after effects. The wounding itself and trying to heal this wound is the root of America's tragedy. In the 30s and 40s FDR formed a progressive coalition, which still dominated American politics even when the Republicans took the White House in 1952. In great part it was built around the poor white people of the "Solid South", at that time many if not most African-Americans, at least those relatively few in the north, who were allowed to vote, despite their poverty, still voted for the party of Abraham Lincoln, the one that had freed them from slavery. During the ideological struggle with the Soviet Union, racial discrimination and segregation were impossible to sustain and the social engineering of the Civil Rights Movement became inevitable.

At that point, we discovered that the poor white people of America, and not only the south, hated black people even more than they loved their own children or themselves and would vote to deprive themselves of all that they needed desperately: health, education, etc, just to keep African-Americans from also enjoying these benefits. Nixon and Reagan built the "Republican or Conservative Renaissance" on this hatred and finally broke the progressive coalition that FDR had built.

This is the tragedy we are living at the present and in the foreseeable future, and explains how the left in America today seems a strictly "parlor pink" operation, inhabited by well-educated people with little need of a welfare state, while those who need a welfare state desperately reject it.

Tragic conclusion: The most noble act of American progressives condemned the progressive movement to death. If that isn't tragedy I don't know what is.