Welcome to Better Than Machines

We were nervous and we didn't know we could do it. Those machines had kept going as long as we could remember. When we finally pulled the switch and there was some quiet, I finally remembered something...that I was a human being, that I could stop those machines, that I was better than those machines anytime.

-- Sit-down striker, Akron, Ohio 1936

This is a progressive political blog, and I am a progressive Democrat. I am a progressive because of my Christian values, my understanding of American political history, and my own rational self-interest.

I believe that democracy, compassion, and the Golden Rule are--and always have been--subversive to our established political order. I believe that our politico-economic system tends to dehumanize people, especially the "least among us," here in America and around the world.

I believe that progress is possible. Throughout our history, ordinary Americans have fought against a system that perpetually tries to push down the many to increase the wealth and privilege of the powerful. And they have won important victories. The battle lines have changed little throughout our history. Today's Web-surfin' progressives--whether we know it or not--are part of the same struggle as the strikers, suffragists, abolitionists, and civil rights marchers who came before us.

So welcome. There's a lot to talk about.