Take Back America!
Aug. 18th, 2003 01:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
athelindAn excellent speech by Bill Moyers at the Take Back America conference held in D.C. back in June:
Ideas have power as long as they are not frozen in doctrine. But ideas need legs. The eight-hour day, the minimum wage, the conservation of natural resources and the protection of our air, water, and land, women’s rights and civil rights, free trade unions, Social Security and a civil service based on merit all these were launched as citizen’s movements and won the endorsement of the political class only after long struggles and in the face of bitter opposition and sneering attacks. It’s just a fact: Democracy doesn’t work without citizen activism and participation, starting at the community. Trickle down politics doesn’t work much better than trickle down economics. It’s also a fact that civilization happens because we don’t leave things to other people. 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. Allow yourself that conceit to believe that the flame of democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
ourfuture.org is a site for populists, progressives, and... Liberals ... who feel that government should be more than just a welfare program for the wealthy and a tool for the corporate oligarchy. Keep an eye on it.
Ideas have power as long as they are not frozen in doctrine. But ideas need legs. The eight-hour day, the minimum wage, the conservation of natural resources and the protection of our air, water, and land, women’s rights and civil rights, free trade unions, Social Security and a civil service based on merit all these were launched as citizen’s movements and won the endorsement of the political class only after long struggles and in the face of bitter opposition and sneering attacks. It’s just a fact: Democracy doesn’t work without citizen activism and participation, starting at the community. Trickle down politics doesn’t work much better than trickle down economics. It’s also a fact that civilization happens because we don’t leave things to other people. 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. Allow yourself that conceit to believe that the flame of democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
ourfuture.org is a site for populists, progressives, and... Liberals ... who feel that government should be more than just a welfare program for the wealthy and a tool for the corporate oligarchy. Keep an eye on it.
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Date: 2003-08-18 06:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-19 07:21 am (UTC)