Brother Dave sent us this speech by Bill Moyers. In his speech, Mr. Moyers more cogently covers much of the territory I have been pondering. He also has a better sense of history than I. I strongly recommend you take the 15-20 min to read the speech. And see if you can spot the same slight historical inaccuracy I did (I suspect it was a typo, since Bill M. would have none the date intimately).
The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange.
G.K. Chesterton, essayist and novelist (1874-1936) [via