While I was reading Death of the Liberal Class, I kept thinking back to the famous scene from the film Network (1976), where anchorman Howard Beale (Peter Finch) goes off-script and rants, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

I wasn’t the only one. Mark Federman, another guest on today’s debate, told me the same thing and wrote about it in his blog.

Now, I’m not saying Hedges is a madman out to get higher ratings – he’s far from it. He’s a brilliant journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize as part of The New York Times team that covered global terrorism in the wake of 9/11. He authored eight books since then and was quoted in the opening of the Oscar Winning Hurt Locker: "The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug."

Hedges works offer his audience a view of twenty-first century America which is hollow, hypnotized by a failed mass-media and a fascistic Christian fundamentalism, and taken over by a corrupt corporatist agenda . He doesn’t mince words, or let anyone off the hook. And he lets his disappointment – his anger even – in what his beloved homeland has turned into, fuel his work. Chris Hedges, whether you agree with him or not, is passionate.

And I hope you tune in to catch some of that passion this evening. Hedges is visiting The Agenda for the full hour. First in a feature interview on his newest book, Death of the Liberal Class , which will hit bookstores by the end of this month. Then he’ll he joined by other leading thinkers to debate the ideas and institutions which support liberal democracies.

It’s not a debate you’re likely to watch or hear anywhere else. But it’s a critical discussion, especially as we bear witness to escalating extremism in politics everywhere.