I'm doing a comprehensive exam on Cornel West's prophetic pragmatism this year, and with the pretense of getting to work on it, I YouTube-ed him. This is the first thing that came up. After watching this talk (and absorbing a few pages of Prophecy Deliverance!), I'm convinced that not only is this man one of the great American philosophers, but he's delivering a political message that's a cogent combination of religion, philosophy and social criticism that I think resonates deeply with this moment in history, with our recent election and what it says about us, what we could be. I hope this really is the death of anti-intellectualism in this country, we are so rich with intellectuals.