Abstract
Rhetorical studies scholarship is not only wider, deeper, and more imaginative than ever before, it also has acquired a powerful melioristic bias. Social activism, once considered the enemy of the objective ideal, is growing every moment and every hour. Studies of economic rhetoric will grow in number and importance, as will analyses of power, inequality, and American economic decline. One of our historic missions will continue into the future: informing the increasingly powerless citizen what the people in power are up to.