“Parrhesia is the cause of my unpopularity.”

[gottaB]

Democracy Now is carrying a speech by Cornel West.

The speech covers a wealth of issues from many different angles. One item that struck me was his critique of anti-intellectualism in America, and how he fused the call for free and critical thinking with a call for spirituality, namely love, expressed through the idiom of music.

Blues people, your democracy needs you.

From the speech's conclusion:

End on a blue note. No optimism here. The evidence does not look good. Being a freedom fighter in the twenty-first century is to make a radical distinction between hope and optimism. One must be a prisoner of hope, yes. Unconditional commitment to mustering the courage to think critically, speak freely. Unconditional commitment to a courage to try to keep track of the humanity of each and every person; the courage to love, serve, and sacrifice. And an unconditional commitment to fight for democracy in its substantive form. A rich public life, pervasive common good, with the private sector and its precious rights and liberties protected, yes, but balanced in such a way that it does not suffocate the public forms of expression, of community, of what holds us together, what connects us, so that our glue does not become so weak that we end up so polarized that we’re at each other’s throats, in part because we’re not organized and mobilized against those powers that be at the top.

How rare it is in American history when significant enough numbers of the citizenry organize and look upward, confront the powers that be rather than scapegoat the most vulnerable. That’s the easiest thing. And in the end we’re talking about leadership that has a blue note and a blue sensibility. But it’s also a leadership that by example, in being willing to speak, act, write, fuse, share, laugh, love, with others, that can inspire us and others, so that it becomes contagious. There’s never any guarantee of any victory in history. Never. Never been, never will be. But if we can convince each other, become less conformist and less complacent, more Socratic, more prophetic, more radically democratic, we have a chance. And I hope and pray that each one of you, in wrestling with these questions, tries to take seriously the Socratic and prophetic and democratic challenges I’ve put forward tonight.

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For the curious, here's a good collection of Cornel West links.