Born to ride, or to wear a saddle?

[ambitious_wench]

I wish I could include it here in its entirety, but it's 11 PDF pages long. So I will content myself with the following excerpt, first quoted by centristsinner on the Argument Shop mailing list. The whole thing can be found here: http://www.ourfuture.org/docUploads/Moyers.2.pdf

BILL MOYERS
Take Back America Conference
Campaign for America’s Future / Institute for America’s Future
Acceptance of America’s Future Lifetime Leadership Award
Wednesday, June 4, 2003
Washington, DC


What will it take to get back in the fight? Understanding the real interests and deep
opinions of the American people is the first thing. And what are those? That a Social
Security card is not a private portfolio statement but a membership ticket in a society
where we all contribute to a common treasury so that none need face the indignities of
poverty in old age without that help. That tax evasion is not a form of conserving
investment capital but a brazen abandonment of responsibility to the country. That
income inequality is not a sign of freedom-of-opportunity at work, because if it persists
and grows, then unless you believe that some people are naturally born to ride and
some to wear saddles, it’s a sign that opportunity is less than equal. That self-interest is
a great motivator for production and progress, but is amoral unless contained within the
framework of community. That the rich have the right to buy more cars than anyone
else, more homes, vacations, gadgets and gizmos, but they do not have the right to buy
more democracy than anyone else. That public services, when privatized, serve only
those who can afford them and weaken the sense that we all rise and fall together as
“one nation, indivisible.” That concentration in the production of goods may sometimes
be useful and efficient, but monopoly over the dissemination of ideas is evil. That
prosperity requires good wages and benefits for workers. And that our nation can no
more survive as half democracy and half oligarchy than it could survive “half slave and
half free” – and that keeping it from becoming all oligarchy is steady work – our work.

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.

Comments

[revalkorn.livejournal.com]

One problem with this: we live in a republic, not a democracy.

Re:

[ambitious-wench.livejournal.com]

Actually, we live in a democratic republic.

Edie
Split hares my speciality. Pass me some carrots, would you?

[turnberryknkn.livejournal.com]

Our damnation --and our hope-- is that, for all the ketetching we activists do, we still (so far) *are* a democracy where majority wins. If and when we ever care enough to change the world, we can. But we will always get precisely the kind of goverment we deserve, at least as long as our democracy stands.

[ex-cerebrate131.livejournal.com]

ObWonka: No, cross that out! Reverse it!

(Except for the, oh, two sentences up there I agree with. Guesses as to which on a postcard...)