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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.

-Bill Moyers

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In Uniform Patriotism Can

Bill Moyers

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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.

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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.

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Although I Was Brought Up In A Culturally And Religious Conservative Culture, As A Baptist I Was Taught That No One Has The Right To Subpoena Your Conscience.

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American History

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How Can Those Of Us Who Are Parents Help Our Children Recognize Their Bliss?

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Creativity Is Piercing The Mundane To Find The Marvelous.

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Public Interest

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Distribution Of Wealth

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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.

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.

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.

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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.

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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Democracy Works When People Claim It As Their Own

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

Best Is Yet To Come

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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."

Secrecy Is The Freedom Tyrants Dream Of.

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

When The Public Loses Faith In Democracy's Ability To Solve The Problems It Has Created For Itself, The Game's Almost Over. And I Think We Are This Close To Losing Democracy To The Mercenary Class.

When We Were Covering The 2008 Campaign I Told My Young African American Colleagues That Despite The Historical Significance Of Victory, Barack Obama Was Going To Break Their Hearts. They Didn't Want To Hear That, And They Refused To Believe It. Eighteen Months Later They Started Dropping By One By One To Say, Sadly: "he Broke Our Hearts." A Couple Of Them Even Wept.

They're Counting On Your Patriotism To Distract You From Their Plunder. They're Counting On You To Be Standing At Attention With Your Hand Over Your Heart, Pledging Allegiance To The Flag, While They Pick Your Pocket!

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

Democracy Only Works When We Claim It As Our Own.

Plutocracy Too Long Tolerated Leaves Democracy On The Auction Block, Subject To The Highest Bidder.

Reagan's Story Of Freedom Superficially Alludes To The Founding Fathers, But Its Substance Comes From The Gilded Age, Devised By Apologists For The Robber Barons. It Is Posed Abstractly As The Freedom Of The Individual From Government Control A Jeffersonian Ideal At The Roots Of Our Bill Of Rights, To Be Sure. But What It Meant In Politics A Century Later, And Still Means Today, Is The Freedom To Accumulate Wealth Without Social Or Democratic Responsibilities And License To Buy The Political System Right Out From Everyone Else.

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.

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.

If You Think There Is Freedom Of The Press In The United States, I Tell You There Is No Freedom Of The Press... They Come Out With The Cheap Shot. The Press Should Be Ashamed Of Itself. They Should Come To Both Sides Of The Issue And Hear Both Sides And Let The American People Make Up Their Minds

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

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

Barack Obama Treated Too Lightly The People And Forces Determined To Destroy Him. They Spat In His Face And Didn't Even Get Ticketed For A Misdemeanor.

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.

The Delusional Is No Longer Marginal.

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.

Professionals Give Advice; Pilgrims Share Wisdom.

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

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.

Why Is The Country Not Having This Conversation, The Kind Of Conversation That Requires The Politicians Who Are Responsible For The War To Be Specific To The Concerns Of The American People.

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.

The Printed Page Conveys Information And Commitment, And Requires Active Involvement. Television Conveys Emotion And Experience, And It's Very Limited In What It Can Do Logically. It's An Existential Experience - There And Then Gone.

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.

What's Right And Good Doesn't Come Naturally. You Have To Stand Up And Fight For It - As If The Cause Depends On You, Because It Does.

Watching The Debate This Afternoon It Was Apparent They Loved Term Limits In The House - As Brutus Loved Caesar.

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.

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

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.

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.

When I Learn Something New - And It Happens Every Day - I Feel A Little More At Home In This Universe, A Little More Comfortable In The Nest.

There's Hardly A More Bitter Pill To Take Than When A President Disappoints The People Who Most Believed In Him.

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 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.

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

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