On their way to jail, to deportation from the country, or to expulsion from school, those who confront the muscle of the state frequently see their rights bruised, their liberties wounded. This book is about some of those people. Therefore, it is about all of us.

Wo rkers at the edge of poverty are essential to America’s prosperity, but their well-being is not treated as an integral part of the whole. Instead, the forgotten wage a daily struggle to keep themselves from falling over the cliff. It is time to be ashamed.

A key test for any society is whether or not it is self-correcting. And to be self-correcting, it must first be open and truthful about itself.

Time magazine found in a 2000 survey that 19 percent of Americans thought they were in the top 1 percent of wage-earners, and another 20 percent expected to be in the future. “So right away you have 39 percent of Americans who thought that when Mr. Gore savaged a plan that favored the top i percent, he was taking a direct shot at them,” wrote David Brooks, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.3.

Being poor is a full-time job, it really is.

Here among the constant ruins and rebuilding of civilizations lies the coexistence of diversity and intolerance.

The Holocaust never quite leaves Israeli Jews alone. Arabs use it against them and they use it against Arabs. Jews use it against other Jews. Even the president of the United States, it seems, can use it against the prime minister of Israel.

Workers on the edge of poverty are essential to America’s prosperity, but their well-being is not treated as an integral part of the whole. Instead, the forgotten wage a daily struggle to keep themselves from falling over the cliff. It is time to be ashamed.

Affairs of state tend to drive most presidents toward the center on both foreign and domestic policy, no matter where on the political spectrum they begin, and especially so in the areas of intelligence and law enforcement.

Obama behaves like a centrist who leans tentatively left on certain social programs but boldly right on military force and civil liberties.