[Chat] BILL MOYERS DELIVERS SPEECH OF THE YEAR

[Crystal]

If you forward this, please be sure to delete my
contact info off the top. With dilligence and the help
of my friends, I keep spam to an absolute minimum.
Thanks.

Also, I just re-read the article and I feel like ...
singing "My Country 'Tis of Thee." I can't even
remember when that last crossed my mind at all.

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The Nation

Bill Moyers's Presidential Address
06/09/2003 @ 10:27am  

Democratic presidential candidates were handed a dream
audience of 1,000 "ready-for-action" labor, civil
rights, peace and economic justice campaigners at the
Take Back America conference organized in Washington
last week by the Campaign for America's Future. And
the 2004 contenders grabbed for it, delivering some of
the better speeches of a campaign that remains
rhetorically -- and directionally -- challenged. But
it was a non-candidate who won the hearts and minds of
the crowd with a "Cross of Gold" speech for 
the 21st century. 

Recalling the populism and old-school progressivism of
the era in which William Jennings Bryan stirred the
Democratic National Convention of 1896 to enter into
the great struggle between privilege and democracy --
and to spontaneously nominate the young Nebraskan for
president -- journalist and former presidential aide
Bill Moyers delivered a call to arms against
"government of, by and for the ruling corporate
class." 

Condemning "the unholy alliance between government and
wealth" and the compassionate conservative spin that
tries to make "the rape of America sound like a
consensual date," Moyers charged that "rightwing
wrecking crews" assembled by the Bush Administration
and its Congressional allies were out to bankrupt
government. Then, he said, they would privatize public

services in order to enrich the corporate interests
that fund campaigns and provide golden parachutes to
pliable politicians. If unchecked, Moyers warned, the
result of these machinations will be the dismantling
of "every last brick of the social contract." 

"I think this is a deliberate, intentional destruction
of the United States of America," said Moyers, as he
called for the progressives gathered in Washington --
and for their allies across the United States -- to
organize not merely in defense of social and economic
justice but in order to preserve democracy itself.
Paraphrasing the words of Abraham Lincoln as the 16th
president rallied the nation to battle against
slavery, Moyers declared, "Our nation can no more
survive as half democracy and half oligarchy than it
could survive half slave and half free." 

There was little doubt that the crowd of activists
from across the country would have nominated Moyers by
acclamation when he finished a remarkable address in
which he challenged not just the policies of the Bush
Administration but the failures of Democratic leaders
in Congress to effectively challenge the president and
his minions. In the face of what he described as "a
radical assault" on American values by those who seek
to redistribute wealth upward from the many to a
wealthy few, Moyers said he could not understand "why
the Democrats are afraid to be labeled class warriors
in a war the other side started and is winning." 

Several of the Democratic presidential contenders who
addressed the crowd after Moyers picked up pieces of
his argument. Former US Senator Carol Moseley Braun
actually quoted William Jennings Bryan, while North
Carolina Senator John Edwards and Massachusetts
Senator John Kerry tried -- with about as much success
as Al Gore in 2000 -- to sound populist. Former House 
Minority Leader Richard Gephardt promised not to be
"Bush-lite," and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean
drew warm applause when he said the way for 
Democrats to get elected "is not to be like
Republicans, but to stand up against them and fight." 
Ultimately, however, only the Rev. Al Sharpton and 
Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Dennis
Kucinich came close to matching the fury and the
passion of the crowd. 

Kucinich, who earned nine standing ovations for his
antiwar and anti-corporate free trade rhetoric,
probably did more to advance his candidacy 
than any of the other contenders. But he never got to
the place Moyers reached with a speech that legal
scholar Jamie Raskin described as one of the most
"amazing and spellbinding" addresses he had ever
heard. Author and activist Frances Moore Lappe said
she was close to tears as she thanked Moyers for
providing precisely the mixture of perspective and
hope that progressives need as they prepare to
challenge the right in 2004. 

That, Moyers explained, was the point of his address,
which reflected on White House political czar Karl
Rove's oft-stated admiration for Mark Hanna, the Ohio
political boss who managed the campaigns and the
presidency of conservative Republican William
McKinley. It was McKinley who beat Bryan in 1896 and
-- with Hanna's help -- fashioned a White House that
served the interests of the corporate trusts. 

Comparing the excesses of Hanna and Rove, and McKinley
and Bush, Moyers said "the social dislocations and the
meanness of the 19th century " were being renewed by a
new generation of politicians who, like their
predecessors, seek to strangle the spirit of the
American revolution "in the hard grip of the ruling
class." 

To break that grip, Moyers said, progressives of today
must learn from the revolutionaries and reformers of
old. Recalling the progressive movement that rose up
in the first years of the 20th century to "restore the
balance between wealth and commonwealth," and the
successes of the New Dealers who turned progressive
ideals into national policy, Moyers told the crowd to 
"get back in the fight." "Hear me!" he cried. "Allow
yourself the conceit to believe that the flame of
democracy will never go out as long as there is one
candle in your hand." 

While others were campaigning last week, Moyers was
tending the flame of democracy. In doing so, he
unwittingly made himself the candle holder-in-chief
for those who seek to spark a new progressive era. 

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in
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