"The failures of government following Hurricane Katrina and the invasion of Iraq have shattered the confidence that our government can deal effectively with modern problems such as climate change, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and disease," Wirth said.

The need for grass-roots movements has little to do with the power held by a Republican party that has rendered America "the sulking and isolated giant it has become," Wirth said.

Wirth views the current leadership as having undetermined America's interests abroad to the extent that "Abu Ghraib threatens to displace the Statue of Liberty" as the American moral beacon in the world's collective consciousness.

But, he said, grass-roots efforts have been the American engine of deep-rooted change for decades.

"The civil rights movement did not come from senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee," Wirth said.