Bill Moyers speech from June at "Take Back America" (A MUST READ)

[Terwilliger]

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0610-11.htm

(more info and audio links at http://www.ourfuture.org/projects/national_conference/2003/ )

<snippet>

It is the most radical assault on the notion of one nation, indivisible, that has occurred in our lifetime. I'll be frank with you: I simply don't understand it – or the malice in which it is steeped. Many people are nostalgic for a golden age. These people seem to long for the Gilded Age. That I can grasp. They measure America only by their place on the material spectrum and they bask in the company of the new corporate aristocracy, as privileged a class as we have seen since the plantation owners of antebellum America and the court of Louis IV. What I can't explain is the rage of the counter-revolutionaries to dismantle every last brick of the social contract. At this advanced age I simply have to accept the fact that the tension between haves and have-nots is built into human psychology and society itself – it's ever with us.

However, I'm just as puzzled as to why, with right wing wrecking crews blasting away at social benefits once considered invulnerable, Democrats are fearful of being branded "class warriors" in a war the other side started and is determined to win. I don't get why conceding your opponent's premises and fighting on his turf isn't the sure-fire prescription for irrelevance and ultimately obsolescence.

But I confess as well that I don't know how to resolve the social issues that have driven wedges into your ranks. And I don't know how to reconfigure democratic politics to fit into an age of soundbites and polling dominated by a media oligarchy whose corporate journalists are neutered and whose right-wing publicists have no shame.

<snip>


.......MUCH MUCH MORE :bounce: .............

OnEdit: it really is worth checking this out...Moyers talks about a lot of things.

[Jacobin]

1. Moyers is a shining light

in this current sea of darkness.

Just about the only TV worth watching other than Jon Stewart.

[jpgray]

2. Pretty good

thanks for putting this up.

[Armstead]

3. Thank You

I was looking for this and couldn't find it.

Moyers, as usual, tells it like it is.

[peekaloo]

4. kick

dammit this guy deserves a bigger audience!


:kick:

[0007]

5. To read this in it's entirety & to absorb it

......is enlightenment in the highest form. And to know that there are folks that still believe in humanity.

Thank you Bill Moyers for an uplifting snapshot of history.

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