THE AWARD FOR THE EARLIEST W NOSTALGIA ON THE LEFT:

The Power of the Ballot (Fred Hiatt, January 19, 2009, Washington Post)

Martin Luther King Jr., born 80 years ago, would not have taken kindly to any suggestion that blacks should delay their push for voting rights while tending to other concerns: low wages, say, or police brutality. Civil rights leaders understood that political power was a prerequisite to fixing income disparities, ending unequal justice and curing other ills.

Yet the incoming Obama administration seems to be inclining, in its foreign policy, toward a philosophy that says: Voting matters, but maybe not as much as economic development, or women's rights, or honest judges. Its adoption as U.S. policy would be a terrible mistake, for America's security as well as its moral standing.

Realism has never meant anything more than accommodating evil in exchange for quiet. Not that it even works....

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 19, 2009 4:38 PM