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Reclaiming America
I just sent this off to several friends--and tried to write it so the most conservative among them will at least read Moyers' speech. I think it deserves a wide audience.
http://www.publicampaign.org/savingdemocracy/
As you love and respect me, please take a moment to follow this link to a speech made recently by journalist Bill Moyers. Among the people he quotes is Berry Goldwater, lifelong conservative and former senator of Arizona. Stay with me until the end:
"The fact that liberty depended on honest elections was of the utmost importance to the patriots who founded our nation and wrote the Constitution. They knew that corruption destroyed the prime requisite of Constitutional liberty, an independent legislature free from any influence other than that of the people . . . representative government assumes that elections will be controlled by the citizenry at large, not by those who give the most money. Electors must believe their vote counts. Elected officials must owe their allegiance to the people, not to their own wealth or to the wealth of interest groups who speak only for the selfish fringes of the whole community."
What is he talking about? He his laying bare the means by which we have been betrayed. We thought we were sending honest people to Washington to make changes--but we have sent the whores into Babylon. They are owned, lock, stock, and barrel, by lobbyists, by corporate bigwigs, by the top 1% of income earners in our society--people who become richer as the middle class becomes poorer.
Please take a moment to read his speech. It's long, but worth your time--and it's broken into four sections, so you can bookmark it and return to it.
http://www.publicampaign.org/savingdemocracy/
And then, after you have read it--after you have researched it, if you wish, to confirm the facts this long-time champion of America has brought together for us to read--please pass the link on. Because we must find a way to break the backs of the lobbyists. We must find a way to insure our votes are truly cast as we intended.
If this means that we each give $10 a year to pay for a campaign chest--impartial, used by all candidates, who cannot use corporate money for campaigns, or private fortunes--and we demand electronic voting machines with paper trails, then so be it.
I close with words Moyer has taken from our president from the turn of the 20th century, Republican Teddy Roosevelt:
"Listen to what Theodore Roosevelt said one hundred years ago when he took on the political bosses and big money of his time for committing “treason to the people.”
We are standing for the great fundamental rights upon which all successful free government must be based. We are standing for elementary decency in politics. We are fighting for honesty against naked robbery. It is not a partisan issue; it is more than a political issue; it is a great moral issue. If we condone political theft, if we do not resent the kinds of wrong and injustice that injuriously affect the whole nation, not merely our democratic form of government but our civilization itself cannot endure.
We need that fighting spirit we need today – the tough, outraged and resilient spirit that knows we have been delivered a great and precious legacy, you and I – 'government of, by and for the people' – and, by God we're going to pass it on."
http://www.publicampaign.org/savingdemocracy/
Thank you for reading his speech.
http://www.publicampaign.org/savingdemocracy/
As you love and respect me, please take a moment to follow this link to a speech made recently by journalist Bill Moyers. Among the people he quotes is Berry Goldwater, lifelong conservative and former senator of Arizona. Stay with me until the end:
"The fact that liberty depended on honest elections was of the utmost importance to the patriots who founded our nation and wrote the Constitution. They knew that corruption destroyed the prime requisite of Constitutional liberty, an independent legislature free from any influence other than that of the people . . . representative government assumes that elections will be controlled by the citizenry at large, not by those who give the most money. Electors must believe their vote counts. Elected officials must owe their allegiance to the people, not to their own wealth or to the wealth of interest groups who speak only for the selfish fringes of the whole community."
What is he talking about? He his laying bare the means by which we have been betrayed. We thought we were sending honest people to Washington to make changes--but we have sent the whores into Babylon. They are owned, lock, stock, and barrel, by lobbyists, by corporate bigwigs, by the top 1% of income earners in our society--people who become richer as the middle class becomes poorer.
Please take a moment to read his speech. It's long, but worth your time--and it's broken into four sections, so you can bookmark it and return to it.
http://www.publicampaign.org/savingdemocracy/
And then, after you have read it--after you have researched it, if you wish, to confirm the facts this long-time champion of America has brought together for us to read--please pass the link on. Because we must find a way to break the backs of the lobbyists. We must find a way to insure our votes are truly cast as we intended.
If this means that we each give $10 a year to pay for a campaign chest--impartial, used by all candidates, who cannot use corporate money for campaigns, or private fortunes--and we demand electronic voting machines with paper trails, then so be it.
I close with words Moyer has taken from our president from the turn of the 20th century, Republican Teddy Roosevelt:
"Listen to what Theodore Roosevelt said one hundred years ago when he took on the political bosses and big money of his time for committing “treason to the people.”
We are standing for the great fundamental rights upon which all successful free government must be based. We are standing for elementary decency in politics. We are fighting for honesty against naked robbery. It is not a partisan issue; it is more than a political issue; it is a great moral issue. If we condone political theft, if we do not resent the kinds of wrong and injustice that injuriously affect the whole nation, not merely our democratic form of government but our civilization itself cannot endure.
We need that fighting spirit we need today – the tough, outraged and resilient spirit that knows we have been delivered a great and precious legacy, you and I – 'government of, by and for the people' – and, by God we're going to pass it on."
http://www.publicampaign.org/savingdemocracy/
Thank you for reading his speech.
Hooray!
I often try to point out (gently) to various people that the ones calling themselves "conservative" right now are NOT. A conservative in the Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon/Pat Buchanan sense is AGAINST government interference in our lives, against federal government expanding, in favor of states making more decisions at the state level, and AGAINST spending that is out of control--instead being FOR a balanced budget as we had before all this craziness took over. Now they seem to say that anyone who is not blindly believing anything the government tells them now is disloyal, a traitor, and "liberal" (no matter what your stated views are on the issues!) The words "liberal" and "conservative" have lost all real meaning in spin country.
I don't know whether we can take back our democracy (actually a representative republic). I don't know whether it may be too late. And too many people are way too busy with their own problems to do anything but stand by.
"When they came for the Jews, I was not a Jew, so I said nothing. When they came for the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, so I kept quiet. When they came for the college graduates, I was afraid to speak up, so I didn't. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out. . . ." (A modified version of the WWII warning about being complacent while all around you liberty is crumbling and the restrictions loudly being called "liberty."
Re: Hooray!
Unfortunately, that's very true.
I don't know whether we can take back our democracy (actually a representative republic). I don't know whether it may be too late. And too many people are way too busy with their own problems to do anything but stand by.
But we must try. I think this is how it goes:
Martin Niemoller, 1892-1984, a Protestant pastor in Nazi Germany:
"They came for the unpatriotic, and I didn't object -
For I was not unpatriotic;
They came for the dissenters and activists, and I
didn't object -
For I wasn't a dissenter or an activist;
"They came for the Communists, and I didn't object -
For I wasn't a Communist;
They came for the Socialists, and I didn't object -
For I wasn't a Socialist;
They came for the labor leaders, and I didn't object -
For I wasn't a labor leader;
They came for the Jews, and I didn't object -
For I wasn't a Jew;
Then they came for me -
And there was no one left to object."