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Conservatism is less a set of ideas than it is a pathological distemper, a militant anger over the fact that the universe is not closed and life is not static.

Bill Moyers

Democracy may not prove in the long run to be as efficient as other forms of government, but it has one saving grace: it allows us to know and say that it isn’t.
BILL MOYERS

Government Long Running
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.
BILL MOYERS

Democracy Economy Greed
News is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is publicity.
BILL MOYERS

News People Want
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.
BILL MOYERS

Believe Thinking Winning
Television can stir emotions, but it doesn’t invite reflection as much as the printed page.
BILL MOYERS

Pages Reflection Television
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.
BILL MOYERS

People Struggle Taken
Charity depends on the vicissitudes of whim and personal wealth; justice depends on commitment instead of circumstance.
BILL MOYERS

Charity Circumstances Commitment Personal Wealth
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.
BILL MOYERS

Out Rivers Sacrifice Work
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.
BILL MOYERS

Democratic Freedom Mean Political Social System Today
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.
BILL MOYERS

Democracy Heart Voting
How can those of us who are parents help our children recognize their bliss?
BILL MOYERS

Children Helping Parents
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.
BILL MOYERS

Degenerate Governance Politics Seminal
America is the longest argument in the world.
BILL MOYERS

Argument Country World
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.
BILL MOYERS

Democracy Mark Veins
Big money and big business, corporations and commerce, are again the undisputed overlords of politics and government.
BILL MOYERS

Government Running White
Our economy is a plantation run for the aristocrats – the CEOs, hedge funds, private equity firms – while the field hands are left with the scraps.
BILL MOYERS

Fields Hands Running

Conservatism is less a set of ideas than it is a pathological distemper, a militant anger over the fact that the universe is not closed and life is not static.

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Conservatism is less a set of ideas than it is a pathological distemper, a militant anger over the fact that the universe is not closed and life is not static.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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