SEATTLE -- Journalist and author Earl Shorris believes the real difference between the haves and have-nots is political power.
"If you want real power, legitimate power, the kind that comes from the people and belongs to the people," he says, "you must understand the politics."
When Shorris speaks of politics, he uses the word polis, a Greek root meaning city or society. The polis he conjures when he writes and speaks encompasses the core values of Western civilization originating in classical Greece: democracy, free speech, individual rights and constitutional government.