Theodore's respectable and well-to-do New York-based Dutch family was aghast when, as a young man, he told them that he wanted to go into politics. But he was swept up in an emerging progressive age that was directly fueled by America's rising middle class.
India is at the same point now.
Great quote today in NYT:
"We've been told since our childhoods, 'Politics is bad, don't get into politics.' But the point is that somebody has to clean it up. We can't just scold people."
PARTHO NAG, on a new activism among the middle class in India.
Politics considered bad. Somebody has to clean it up.
There's your progressive impulse in a nutshell.