Oh imladris, this is a really good question. It is not easy - because I think young people today have seen very few things to inspire them, and, as you point out, have never seen government that, with all the faults of the US government up to around 1980, could be said to have had other values than how to serve corporate interests and get campaign contributions to get re-elected. 

Right now I am teaching American Government, or ending that course. I have tried always to get across two messages that I use also when I teach International Relations courses.

One is that politicians are not only vote-getting machines and most actually want to do something. If they are prevented from accomplishing anything, we should look first to four things - what was wrong with the project they had in mind that may have prevented its coming to fruition; what about the institutional arrangement of government makes it difficult to do what they want to do or were elected to do - the US Constitution and the Federalist papers, which we study, are important here because one way to read Federalist Papers 10 and 51 (two of the greatest pieces of political thinking ever IMO) is that they are set up to make it hard to do anything and especially for a majority to accomplish what they want; how the thinking about the world that is dominant in the minds of policy makers is responsible for why things don't work out - this is a major theme of my recent writing on Global Governance - well meaning people unable to escape the "Common sense" they encounter among their peers - the other G20 leaders, the elites at Davos etc. continue policies they see are not working; finally how power relations always trump debate - this is what is happening now in Europe, where everyone agrees austerity has failed and their is a need for pro-growth policies, but it doesn't matter, because the forces in Europe that have an interest in austerity are much more powerful than even the combined pro-growth forces. 

The second message is a true story: years ago I was teaching a course on something another at the American University of Rome and in the middle of a semester, in the middle of a class session in the middle of a lecture on something or other - the EU, or political party systems or something this student, quiet, dignified, young but a Veteran of the Iraq War raised his hand and interrupted me. He asked me, "Has politics ever led to a better world ?"

It was one of those moments where you learn who you really are and have always been. I did not think, lose a beat, hesitate for a second. As soon as he finished the question I blurted out "I don't think anything else ever has." I then got a second to think and elaborated: "You could argue that religion, or psychiatry, or art or other things have made this or that individual life richer or fuller or happier. But I don't think you could say that any of those things has ever resulted in collective society, in the larger community or world or its institutions getting or acting better. But politics has sometimes. Not always. And it has probably made the world worse more often than it has made it better. Its capacity to make it worse is probably at least as great, maybe greater than its ability to do good. But it has made a better world sometimes - Greek democracy was flawed but better than the ancient monarchies. The city state republics in the Middle Ages and Renaissance were better than what came before or after. The American Revolution and the French Revolution made the world a better place. So did Lincoln. So did the rise of democracy, social democracy, anti-fascism, the Civil Rights movement and so on and so on. Nothing else compares to politics to make a better world, which is why Aristotle considered it the highest level of human achievement, so much so that he defined humans as "a political animal" (Plato said we were hairless animals or something like that and Diogenes who was always breaking people's you know what's showed up at one Plato's lectures with a plucked chicken and asked if it was a human being). "

So I said then and so I think now. One of the problems we all face is that the democratic institutions that we have painstakingly built over centuries of struggles and that we have been able to get to work well sometimes to work for some kind of public good and the interests of the people have been trumped - power and decisions are now often taken really at the level of the Global Governance institutions like the G20, the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, the European Commission, which are unelected and unresponsive to public opinion or public pressure. This naturally makes people withdraw from politics but that is a part of what these organizations and their leaders are counting on. 

sorry for the long lecture, but the question moved me, and I am shooting for this week's boogerlips "longest freakin' post" award. 

1.  The argument can be made that religion, or rather organized religion, has had an enormous impact on moving society forward (and backward, in many notable instances).  Without getting too far into it, government provided structure in ancient society; religion provided moral guidance.  By acknowledging a superior, eternal being (or beings), continuity was provided (morality was not completely dictated by whoever ruled next) and a sense of long-term community developed.  Government and religion together moved mankind forward.

2.  When Aristotle referred to politics, such as it being a high aspiration and that man is a political animal, I believe he was speaking of man taking responsibility for participating in his own affairs, as embodied in the Greek Polis; and in applying reason to such actions (both his Politics and his Ethics, I believe, bear this out).  I do not believe he was speaking of politics as we know it, because ...

3.  I would argue that politics in and of itself has never led to anything.  Government, yes; politics, no.  Politics - whether it be the art of government/governing or the means of achieving political position - has itself not led mankind anywhere.  For example, in a representative government the art of politics allows decisions to be made and policies implemented.  It is the system of government that allows for the practice of politics; it is the government that moves things forward, not the politics.  It's like saying an automobile drive train gets me to work every day; no, a car does, the drive train is but a part and would be useless without the car.

I agree with your point number 2 completely, and to some degree was speaking a shorthand meaning just this. As to your point 3, in the book I am writing I specifically make the distinction between the State on the one hand, and government, which pre-dates the state by thousands of years and some versions of which continue to exist, if in truncated form, among the Iroquois, in Chiapas, and in villages from Africa to India. 

So I guess I agree there as well. 

I am not sure I agree with you on point number 1 - not that there is anything wrong factually with your description of the history. It may be that we are talking about two different things - your discussion of religion more or less accords with Durkheim's and to that degree we are not far apart. I think I was asking whether religion as an organized force had changed the world for the better and I am pretty sure the answer is still no. But religious movements, and religion as a part of a larger, benign social structure, which seems to be what you mean here, yes. 

As Hesiod wrote, "Zeus gave men justice, which he gave to no other animal."

Here is a real game of the week IMHO: 


http://www.whatifsports.com/slb/Boxscore.aspx?gid=18127511&pid=1&pbp=0&tf=10

Here's one that should take over for that one next:

whatifsports.com/slb/Boxscore.aspx

Hey, Paul Lindblad does it again! Aside from the whole blowing the game thing. But Lindblad was the guy on the mound for the A's in '73 to earn the Game 3 win, pitching in the 9th and 10th inning to earn the win (Fingers came in to close out the 11th for the save).

Now if you're a real trivia buff, you'll know what else was special about Lindblad's appearance that day.

Opening Day, 100M Exclusive Pitcher League, home team blows a 10-0 lead in the 9th inning, comes back in the 12th to win it:

whatifsports.com/slb/Boxscore.aspx

Amazing game!  25 pitch count seems high for that version of Billy Wagner.

Here was an exciting one I was in recently:

http://www.whatifsports.com/x.asp?r=614781&u=/slb/Boxscore.aspx?gid=18589651.ppid=1.ppbp=0.ptf=9.95

They don't go back and forth as much as this one very often.