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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.

-Bill Moyers

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I Report The Assault

Bill Moyers

...

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.

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Public Interest

When All Our Efforts Have Come To Nothing, We Naturally Tend To Doubt Not Just Ourselves, But Also Whether God Is Just. At Those Moments, Our Only Hope Is To Seek Every Evidence That God Is Just, By Communing With The People We Know Who Are Strongest In Faith.

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On The Eve Of The Election Last Month My Wife Judith And I Were Driving Home Late In The Afternoon And Turned On The Radio For The Traffic And Weather. What We Instantly Got Was A Freak Show Of Political Pornography: Lies, Distortions, And Half-truths - Half-truths Being Perhaps The Blackest Of All Lies. They Paraded Before Us As Informed Opinion.

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

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.

When I Was Growing Up, I Never Heard Anyone Pray, "give Me This Day My Daily Bread." It Was Always, "give Us This Day Our Daily Bread." That Stuck. We're All In This Together.

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I Really Believe That Coincidence Is God's Way Of Remaining Anonymous.

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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.

America's Corporate And Political Elites Now Form A Regime Of Their Own And They're Privatizing Democracy. All The Benefits - The Tax Cuts, Policies And Rewards Flow In One Direction: Up.

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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.

Secrecy Is The Freedom Tyrants Dream Of.

Unless You're Willing To Fight And Refight The Same Battles Until You Go Blue In The Face, Drive The People You Work With Nuts Going Over Every Detail To Make Certain You've Got It Right, And Then Take Hit After Unfair Hit Accusing You Of Bias, There's No Use Even Trying. You Have To Love It, And I Do. You Just Hope It Strikes A Spark Somewhere In The Critical Mass Of Public Opinion And Helps Some People To Resist Further The Seductions Of Political And Corporate Advertising.

I Own And Operate A Ferocious Ego.

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Our Very Lives Depend On The Ethics Of Strangers, And Most Of Us Are Always Strangers To Other People.

Television Can Stir Emotions, But It Doesn't Invite Reflection As Much As The Printed Page.

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.

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America Is The Longest Argument In The World.

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The Things I Really Cared About - Poverty, The Great Society, Civil Rights - Were All Being Drained Away By The Vietnam War. The Line That Keeps Running Through My Mind Is The Line I Never Spoke: "i Can't Speak For A War That I Believe Is Immoral."

I've Always Thought The American Eagle Needed A Left Wing And A Right Wing. The Right Wing Would See To It That Economic Interests Had Their Legitimate Concerns Addressed. The Left Wing Would See To It That Ordinary People Were Included In The Bargain. Both Would Keep The Great Bird On Course. But With Two Right Wings Or Two Left Wings, It's No Longer An Eagle And It's Going To Crash.

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

I'll Believe Corporations Are People When Texas Executes One

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.

The Delusional Is No Longer Marginal.

If The Watchdog Doesn't Bark, How Do You Know There's A Burglar In The Basement? And The Press Is Supposed To Be A Watchdog.

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.

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.

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.

I Like What I Do And Keep Thinking The Best Is Yet To Come.

Best Is Yet To Come

Here Is The Crisis Of The Times As I See It: We Talk About Problems, Issues, Policies, But We Don't Talk About What Democracy Means - What It Bestows On Us - The Revolutionary Idea That It Isn't Just About The Means Of Governance But The Means Of Dignifying People So They Become Fully Free To Claim Their Moral And Political Agency.

Revolutionary Ideas

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News Is What People Want To Keep Hidden And Everything Else Is Publicity.

Democracy Belongs To Those Who Exercise It.

Hyperbole Was To Lyndon Johnson What Oxygen Is To Life.

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Beauty Is An Expression Of That Rapture Of Being Alive.

We Have Got To Nurture The Spirit Of Independent Journalism In This Country, Or We'll Not Save Capitalism From Its Own Excesses, And We'll Not Save Democracy From Its Own Inertia.

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

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A Producer Is A Saboteur Who Tries To Infiltrate The Passivity Of Viewers And To Create Impressions That Are Lasting.

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.

A Journalist Is Basically A Chronicler, Not An Interpreter Of Events. Where Else In Society Do You Have The License To Eavesdrop On So Many Different Conversations As You Have In Journalism? Where Else Can You Delve Into The Life Of Our Times?

Presidents Are Afraid To Lose Wars. They're Afraid To Be Outflanked On The Right By The Militarists. They Don't Want To Be Seen As Soft On Either Communism Or Soft On Terrorism Or Whatever. So Presidents Are Constantly Tugged Away From Their Domestic Commitments To Foreign Policy.

The Interfaith Alliance Has To Become An Ongoing Sustaining And Powerful Movement Whose Interest Is To Prove That Religion Has A Healing Side As Well As A Killing Side, And That Democracy Is The Consequence Of Conscience

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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.

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.

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.

The Quality Of Democracy And The Quality Of Journalism Are Deeply Entwined.

Lyndon Johnson Was Thirteen Of The Most Interesting And Difficult Men I Ever Met. He Could Be As Couth As He Was Uncouth, As Magnanimous As Malicious, At Times Proud And Sensitive, At Times Paranoid And Darkly Uneasy With Himself. Freud Would Have Had A Field Day With Him.

Professionals Give Advice; Pilgrims Share Wisdom.

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.

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Difficult Choices

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.

Journalists Who Make Mistakes Get Sued For Libel; Historians Who Make Mistakes Get To Publish A Revised Edition.

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

Empty Your Knapsack Of All Adjectives, Adverbs And Clauses That Slo Your Stride And Weaken Your Pace. Travel Light. Remember The Most Memorable Sentences In The English Language Are Also The Shortest: "the King Is Dead" And "jesus Wept."

In Uniform Patriotism Can Salute One Flag Only, Embrace But The First Circle Of Life - One's Own Land And Tribe. In War That Is Necessary, In Peace It Is Not Enough.

Creativity Is Piercing The Mundane To Find The Marvelous.

We See More And More Of Our Presidents And Know Less And Less About What They Do.

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.

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

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

Democracy Works When People Claim It As Their Own

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

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