How far we've come (or more aptly, How far have we come?)

Last night, while driving home, I had the pleasure of listening to C-Span's broadcast of a focus group out of York, Pennsylvania. While they may not be quite the 21st century average cross section of America that I imagined (at least I hope not), I was both pleased by their honesty, and frightened by the groups overall tone at the same time. The host of the discussion panel was Peter Hart. I was impressed with his impartiality throughout the forum. His questions were very well thought out. The panelists I think were all Caucasian and mostly female. Most had fairly strong opinions, even if some of them were baseless in how they were formed. Some panelists gave me the impression that they were just following the whim of what everyone else did before them (be it right or wrong, usually the latter). Check it out for yourself.

rtsp://video1.c-span.org/archive/c08/c08_062408_hart3.rm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/29/AR2008062901875_pf.html