As long as we cling to the two-party system and winner-take-all voting, I believe we will continue to have an immature democracy.

For alternatives to winner-take-all, see Fairvote.org and the Instant Runoff site. We won't get these reforms just by asking for them, however. It will take a mass democratic movement.

The Green Party may take a long time to reach the top levels of power in the U.S., but I am sure it will get there. Unlike other third-party efforts, the Greens are already an unstoppable global movement. Knock 'em out in the U.S. and they'll just keep plugging away in Canada and Mexico until the U.S. is ready to try again. Wisely, the Greens build from the local level upward, and the movement is decentralized.

The vision that unites the global Green movement is a set of 10 \"key values\" (listed at www.gp.org) -- much like the 8 keys of CPNN -- that serves as a standard for evaluating actions. It is not easy for a demagogue or hate group to co-opt a vision founded on clearly stated core principles. If democracy has a future (and I believe it has), this is probably it.