Transforming America is a 200 year old bi-partisan objective

Here's an interesting liberal professor's view of the history of the word "community" and how it was used by America's founders: Liberty, Community, and the National Idea, by Alan Brinkley, in The American Prospect, November 30, 2002

"Thus, in setting an American agenda for a new world order, we must begin with a profound alteration in traditional thought," he said. Senator Joe Biden, 1992. http://www.udel.edu/PR/UpDate/93/9/19.html

"McCain says he recognizes that globalization "will not automatically benefit every American" and that it has led to increased concerns about domestic job security. He has argued, however, that the benefits of a free-trade policy outweigh the short-term loss of manufacturing jobs in the US. McCain has pledged to restructure the unemployment insurance system into a program that would would re-train, relocate, and assist the unemployed in finding new work."
http://www.votegopher.com/issue.php?issue=15&can=3

"In the my wildest dreams, during eighteen years of championing communitarianism, I did not expect a presidential candidate to be as strongly identified with this political philosophy as Obama is." Amitai Etzioni, founder of the Communitarian Network http://blog.amitaietzioni.org/2008/05/obama-the-second-half.html

"In the early '90s, Wasilla was little more than half as big as it is today, and much more loosely confederated. The main issue then, says longtime resident Chas St. George, was public safety. "We needed a police department," he says. "So we set up a group to make it happen." That group — Watch on Wasilla — included a handful of the town's most influential figures: St. George; the town's mayor, John Stein; and Palin, who wasn't in elected office yet. Her father-in-law Jim Palin and his wife Faye were also in the group." http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1837918,00.html

I can find hundreds of articles discussing Palin's slur against Obama's community activism, but I can't find anything online about Palin's first experience in a community activist group, Watch on Wasilla, besides the above reference to it on Time.com. Too bad, because I think it's a key to understanding her early training in "right-wing" communitarian activism. It would also be useful to have more information on the City Manager she hired to run Wasilla for her.