Description"There is not a single American awake to the world who is comfortable with the way things are." So begins Lawrence Lessig\'s sweeping indictment of contemporary American institutions and the corruption that besets them.
This book represents the first steps..
It will be a long struggle.
If we don\'t acknowledge our own part in that, and act now to change it, we will hand our children a less perfect union than we were given.
So he brings copious, damning detail gleaned from years of research, building a case that is all but incontrovertible: America is on the wrong path.
Lessig knows that a charge so broad should not be levied lightly, and that our instinct will be to resist it.
Through case studies of Congress, finance, the academy, the media, and the law, Lessig shows how institutions are drawn away from higher purposes and toward money, power, quick rewards--the first steps to corruption.
Not through crime, but through compromise." Every one of us, every day, making the modest compromises that seem necessary to keep moving along, is contributing to the rot at the core of American civic life.
Not by evil souls, but by good souls.
Rather, he explains, "We have allowed core institutions of America\'s economic, social, and political life to become corrupted.
What Lessig shows, brilliantly and persuasively, is that we can\'t blame the problems of contemporary American life on bad people, as our discourse all too often tends to do.
And it\'s our fault.
It\'s getting worse.
Something is wrong.
We can all see it--from the selling of Congress to special interests to the corporate capture of the academy.
Description"There is not a single American awake to the world who is comfortable with the way things are." So begins Lawrence Lessig\'s sweeping indictment of contemporary American institutions and the corruption that besets them
