Monday, February 19, 2007

"The laws of this country do not prevent the strong from crushing the weak."

Nor even offer much in the way of impediments.

Still, ever hopeful, Bill Moyers writes: "The salvation of democracy requires a public aroused by the knowledge of what is being done to them in their name. Here is the crisis of the times as I see it: We talk about problems, issues, policies, but we don't talk about what democracy means - what it bestows on us - the revolutionary idea that it isn't just about the means of governance but the means of dignifying people so they become fully free to claim their moral and political agency."

And this:
We cannot build a political consensus or a nation across the vast social divides that mark our country today. Consensus arises from bridging that divide and making society whole again, the fruits of freedom and prosperity made available to the least among us. What we have to determine now, as Wilson said in his day, "is whether we are big enough ... whether we are free enough, to take possession again of the government which is our own. We haven't had free access to it, our minds have not touched it by way of guidance, in half a generation, and now we are engaged in nothing less than the recovery of what was made with our own hands, and acts only by our delegated authority."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i was more than a bit off-put to find Moyers quoting Leo Strauss with approval.