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Democracy Doesn't Begin At The Top; It Begins At The Bottom, When Flesh-and-blood Human Beings Fight To Rekindle What Arlo Guthrie Calls 'the Patriot's Dream.

-Bill Moyers

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Democracy Doesn't Begin At

Bill Moyers

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Democracy Doesn't Begin At The Top; It Begins At The Bottom, When Flesh-and-blood Human Beings Fight To Rekindle What Arlo Guthrie Calls 'the Patriot's Dream.

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Fox News And Rush Limbaugh Have Raised Ignorance To Ideology And Stupefied An Entire Political Party. No More Roguish And Rowdy Band Of Predators Ever Did More To Demean And Despoil The Democracy On Whose Carcass They Feed.

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I Take "we, The People" Seriously Because I Don't Know How We Build A Civilization Without Reciprocity.

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Public Interest

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The Property Qualifications For Federal Office That The Framers Of The Constitution Expressly Chose To Exclude For Demonstrating An Unseemly "veneration Of Wealth " Are Now De Facto In Force And Higher Than The Founding Fathers Could Have Imagined.

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I Hear An Almost Inaudible But Pervasive Discontent With The Price We Pay For Our Current Materialism. And I Hear A Fluttering Of Hope That There Might Be More To Life Than Bread And Circuses.

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In Tracking Down And Eliminating Terrorists, We Need To Change Our Metaphor From A "war On Terror" - Exactly What, Pray Tell, Is That? - To The Mind-set Of Interpol Tracking Down Master Criminals Through Intense Global Cooperation Among Nations, Or The Fbi Stalking The Mafia, Or Local Police Determined To Quell Street Gangs Without Leveling The Entire Neighborhood In The Process.

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Best Is Yet To Come

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Barack Obama Strikes Me As A Man Of Strong Principles And Weak Convictions - The Kind Of Guy Who Would Rather Teach Constitutional Law Than Practice It, Or Who'd Rather Watch The Match Alone On Tv Than Arm-wrestle His Opponents.

Charity Is Commendable; Everyone Should Be Charitable. But Justice Aims To Create A Social Order In Which, If Individuals Choose Not To Be Charitable, People Still Don't Go Hungry, Unschooled Or Sick Without Care. Charity Depends On The Vicissitudes Of Whim And Personal Wealth; Justice Depends On Commitment Instead Of Circumstance.

Democracy Doesn't Begin At The Top; It Begins At The Bottom, When Flesh-and-blood Human Beings Fight To Rekindle What Arlo Guthrie Calls 'the Patriot's Dream.

I Can Tell You That The Job Of Trying To Tell The Truth About People Whose Job It Is To Hide The Truth Is About As Complicated And Difficult As Trying To Hide It In The First Place.

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Capitalism Is Out Of Control, Thanks In No Small Part To Citizens United, The Supreme Court Decision Which Said That A Corporation Is A Person, Even Though It Doesn't Eat, Drink, Make Love, Sing, Raise Children Or Take Care Of Aging Parents. You Can't Have A People's Democracy As Long As Corporations Are Considered People.

There Is No More Important Struggle For American Democracy Than Ensuring A Diverse, Independent And Free Media. Free Press Is At The Heart Of That Struggle.

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I Can't Speak For A War That I Believe Is Immoral.

Hyperbole Was To Lyndon Johnson What Oxygen Is To Life.

We Seem To Prefer A Comfortable Lie To The Uncomfortable Truth. We Punish Those Who Point Out Reality, And Reward Those Who Provide Us With The Comfort Of Illusion. Reality Is Fearsome .. But Experience Tells Us That More Fearsome Yet Is Evading It.

Conservatives Or Better, Pro-corporate Apologists Hijacked The Vocabulary Of Jeffersonian Liberalism And Turned Words Like "progress," "opportunity," And "individualism" Into Tools For Making The Plunder Of America Sound Like Divine Right. This "degenerate And Unlovely Age," As One Historian Calls It, Exists In The Mind Of Karl Rove The Reputed Brain Of George W. Bush As The Seminal Age Of Inspiration For Politics And Governance Of America Today.

In Fact, So Much Of Life, As You Know, Is Serendipitous. That's Why You Better Be Prepared At Any Time For Anything, Because It May Happen To You.

Standing Up To Your Government Can Mean Standing Up For Your Country.

In One Way Or Another, This Is The Oldest Story In America: The Struggle To Determine Whether “we, The People” Is A Moral Compact Embedded In A Political Contract Or Merely A Charade Masquerading As Piety And Manipulated By The Powerful And Privileged To Sustain Their Own Way Of Life At The Expense Of Others.

Charity Provides Crumbs From The Table; Justice Offers A Place At The Table.

You Can't Have A People's Democracy As Long As Corporations Are Considered People.

Scientists Investigate That Which Already Is; Engineers Create That Which Has Never Been. Creativity Is Piercing The Mundane To Find The Marvelous.

[martin Luther] King Subpoened The Nation's Conscience. He Was Killed For It.

I'll Believe Corporations Are People When Texas Executes One

Sure Enough, As Merger Has Followed Merger, Journalism Has Been Driven Further Down The Hierarchy Of Values In The Huge Conglomerates That Dominate What We See, Read And Hear. And To Feed The Profit Margins Journalism Has Been Directed To Other Priorities Than "the News We Need To Know To Keep Our Freedoms"

Freedom Begins The Moment You Realize Someone Else Has Been Writing Your Story And It's Time You Took The Pen From His Hand And Started Writing It Yourself.

People Who Don't Believe In Government Are Likely To Defy Our Government.

Creativity Is Piercing The Mundane To Find The Marvelous.

When Ideology And Theology Couple, Their Offspring Are Not Always Bad But They Are Always Blind.

Although Our Interests As Citizens Vary, Each One Is An Artery To The Heart That Pumps Life Through The Body Politic, And Each Is Important To The Health Of Democracy.

If Being Tolerant Of Differing Opinions, If Believing That America Has To Make It As A Pluralistic Nation, If Being Civil, If That Makes You A Liberal, I Plead Guilty.

When A Library Is Open, No Matter Its Size Or Shape, Democracy Is Open, Too.

President Bush, Whose Scorn For Journalists Is Balanced By A Soft Spot In His Heart For The Conglomerates They Work For, Threatens To Veto The Senate Action. Keep In Mind That When The Public Was Asked To Submit Comments To The Fcc About Consolidation, Only One Percent Approved It. The President May Not Be Listening, But The Senate Is, And The Public Won This Round. The House Has A Similar Resolution Under Consideration.

Secrecy Is The Freedom Tyrants Dream Of.

Democracy Only Works When We Claim It As Our Own.

The Struggle Of Ordinary People For A Decent Living, For Security, Is As Old As The Republic, But It's Taken On A New And Urgent Edge. Instead Of Shared Prosperity Our Political System Has Now Produced A Winner-take-all Economy.

Barack Obama Seemed To Think He Could Win Over His Enemies. He Certainly Seemed To Believe Too Much In His Own Powers Of Persuasion. One Thing's For Sure - He Misunderstood The Nature Of His Adversaries.

An Unconscious People, An Indoctrinated People, A People Fed Only Partisan Information And Opinion That Confirm Their Own Bias, A People Made Morbidly Obese In Mind And Spirit By The Junk Food Of Propaganda Is Less Inclined To Put Up A Fight, Ask Questions And Be Skeptical. And Just As A Democracy Can Die Of Too Many Lies, That Kind Of Orthodoxy Can Kill Us, Too.

I've Lived Long Enough To See The Triumph Of Zealots And Absolutists, To Watch Money Swallow Politics, To Witness The Rise Of The Corporate State. See The Party Of Working And Poor People Become A Sycophant Of Crony Capitalism. Watch The Union Of Church And State Become Fashionable Again. Witness The Coupling Of News And Entertainment. See Everyday People Cast Overboard As The Pirates And Predators Of Wall Street Seized The Ship Of State. I Didn't Drift; I Moved Left Just By Standing Still.

I Own And Operate A Ferocious Ego.

Jon Stewart Is A Remarkable Satirist And Parodist In The Vein Of Mark Twain, Because Jon Stewart Understands What Mark Twain Knew, Which Is That The Truth Goes Down More Easily In A Democracy When It's Marinated In Humor.

The Supreme Court Consistently Favors Organized Money And The Political Privileges Of The Corporate Class. We Have A Senate That Is More Responsive To Affluent Constituents Than To Middle-class Constituents, While The Opinions Of Constituents In The Bottom Third Of Income Distribution Have No Apparent Effect At All On The Senate's Roll Call Votes.

In America, One Of Our Two Major Parties Is Dominated By Extremists Dedicated To Destroying The Social Contract, And The Other Party Has Been So Enfeebled By Two Decades Of Collaboration With The Donor Class It Can Offer Only Feeble Resistance To The Forces That Are Devastating Everyday People.

It's The People Who Are Doing The Nonviolent Organizing At The Grassroots That Make Me Think There's Still Hope.

We Don't Care Really About Children As A Society And Television Reflects That Indifference To Children As Human Beings.

Now Barack Obama, Who Campaigned For Transparency, Is The President Defending Secret Negotiations On New Trade Agreements That Are Largely Being Written By Corporate Lawyers And Lobbyists. He Would Give Corporations The Key To The Treasury While He Gets The Authority To Fast Track Another Hammering Of Working People And The Environment. Yet The Only People Who Get A Real Tongue-lashing From This President's White House Are Progressives Around Town Who Dare To Call Him On The Carpet For Abandoning His Promises.

I Report The Assault On Nature Evidenced In Coal Mining That Tears The Tops Off Mountains And Dumps Them Into Rivers, Sacrificing The Health And Lives Of Those In The River Valleys To Short-term Profit, And I See A Link Between That Process And The Stock-market Frenzy Which Scorns Long-term Investments-genuine Savings-in Favor Of Quick Turnovers And Speculative Bubbles Whose Inevitable Bursting Leaves Insiders With Stuffed Pockets And Millions Of Small Stockholders, Pensioners, And Employees Out Of Work, Out Of Luck, And Out Of Hope.

In Marriage, Everyday You Love,and Everyday You Forgive.it Is An Ongoing Sacrament, Love And Forgiveness

I Have Seen Hate Born Of Fear, Hate Speaking In The Name Of God And Truth, Hate Holding Up A Distorting Mirror To Fellow Human Beings.

Having Lost Faith In All Else, Zealots Have Nothing Left But A Holy Cause To Please A Warrior God. They Win If We Become Holy Warriors, Too; If We Kill The Innocent As They Do; Strike First At Those Who Had Not Struck Us; Allow Our Leaders To Use The Fear Of Terrorism To Make Us Afraid Of The Truth; Cease To Think And Reason Together, Allowing Others To Tell What's In God's Mind.

The Most Fundamental Liberal Failure Of The Current Era: The Failure To Embrace A Moral Vision Of America Based On The Transcendent Faith That Human Beings Are More Than The Sum Of Their Material Appetites, Our Country Is More Than An Economic Machine, And Freedom Is Not License But Responsibility.

Journalism's Been A Continuing Course In Adult Education For Me.

Television Is A Medium. It Is Neither Rare Nor Well Done.

Lyndon Johnson Believed The Poor Deserved A Better Life Than The Economy Was Providing Them. He Thought Private Power And Greed Had To Be Checked By A Vibrant Democracy.

As A Student I Learned From Wonderful Teachers And Ever Since Then I've Thought Everyone Is A Teacher.

Fate Handed Barack Obama The Best Of All Political Gifts - A Dyspeptic, Surly, Spiteful Opposition On The One Hand And Very Unpopular Financiers On The Other - And He Wouldn't Come Out Punching, Name Names, Or Go For The Jugular. It Was As If While Getting Mugged By Guys With Brass Knuckles, He Turned The Other Cheek. He Even Jeopardized His Pledge To Preserve Women's Rights Under Roe V. Wade In Order To Get A Health Care Bill Written By The Corporate Lapdog Max Baucus And The Gang Of Revolving Door Mercenaries He Hired To Write A Bill Friendly To Industry.

The Most Important Thing The Giant Philanthropies Could Do - Gates, Rockefeller, Ford, Open Society Institute, And New Ones Emerging - Would Be To Create A $2-to-$3 Billion Trust For Independent Journalism. They Wouldn't Miss The Money, And Democracy Would Still Have A Fighting Chance Because Of Their Investment.

A Free Press Is One Where It's Okay To State The Conclusion You're Led To By The Evidence. One Reason I'm In Hot Water Is Because My Colleagues And I At Now Didn't Play By The Conventional Rules Of Beltway Journalism. Those Rules Divide The World Into Democrats And Republicans, Liberals And Conservatives, And Allow Journalists To Pretend They Have Done Their Job If Instead Of Reporting The Truth Behind The News, They Merely Give Each Side An Opportunity To Spin The News.

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