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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

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Bill Moyers
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: June 5
Former White House Press Secretary
Journalist
Hugo
Oklahoma
Billy Don Moyers
Billy Moyers
Ideas
Static
Life
Conservatism
Closed
Anger
Less
Fact
Distemper
Universe
Pathological
Facts
Militant

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There is no more important struggle for American democracy than ensuring a diverse, independent and free media. Free Press is at the heart of that struggle.
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...there is no more effective public interest watchdog in Washington, D.C.
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If the watchdog doesn't bark, how do you know there's a burglar in the basement? And the press is supposed to be a watchdog.
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Sharing is the essence of teaching. It is, I have come to believe, the essence of civilization...Without it, the imagination is but the echo of the self, trapped in a soundproof chamber, reverberating upon itself until it is spent in exhaustion or futility.
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The Supreme Court consistently favors organized money and the political privileges of the corporate class. We have a Senate that is more responsive to affluent constituents than to middle-class constituents, while the opinions of constituents in the bottom third of income distribution have no apparent effect at all on the Senate's roll call votes.
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Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.
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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.
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Charity depends on the vicissitudes of whim and personal wealth justice depends on commitment instead of circumstance. Faith-based charity provides crumbs from the table faith-based justice offers a place at the table.
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In those days [1955], affirmative action was for whites only. I might still be working for the grocery store in the small Texas town where I grew up were it not for affirmative action for Southern white boys.
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In one way or another, this is the oldest story in America: the struggle to determine whether “we, the people” is a moral compact embedded in a political contract or merely a charade masquerading as piety and manipulated by the powerful and privileged to sustain their own way of life at the expense of others.
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The property qualifications for federal office that the framers of the Constitution expressly chose to exclude for demonstrating an unseemly veneration of wealth are now de facto in force and higher than the Founding Fathers could have imagined.
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There's hardly a more bitter pill to take than when a President disappoints the people who most believed in him.
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These are the now-endangered markers of a civilized society: legally ordained minimum wages, child labor laws, workers safety and compensation laws, pure foods and safe drugs, Social Security, Medicare and rules that promote competitive markets over monopolies and cartels.
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[Martin Luther] King subpoened the nation's conscience. He was killed for it.
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The thing about war is that once it's triggered, it is unyielding in its appetite. And the more it consumes and gorges, the more it wants.
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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.
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The delusional is no longer marginal.
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The printed page conveys information and commitment, and requires active involvement. Television conveys emotion and experience, and it's very limited in what it can do logically. It's an existential experience - there and then gone.
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Our great progressive struggles have been waged to make sure ordinary citizens, and not just the rich and privileged, share in the benefits of a free society.
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