Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers
Billy Don "Bill" Moyersis an American journalist and political commentator. He served as White House Press Secretary in the Johnson administration from 1965 to 1967. He also worked as a network TV news commentator for ten years. Moyers has been extensively involved with public broadcasting, producing documentaries and news journal programs. He has won numerous awards and honorary degrees for his investigative journalism and civic activities. He has become well known as a trenchant critic of the corporately structured U.S...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Show Host
Date of Birth5 June 1934
CityHugo, OK
CountryUnited States of America
War, except in self-defense, is a failure of moral imagination.
In uniform patriotism can salute one flag only, embrace but the first circle of life-one's own land and tribe. In war that is necessary, in peace it is not enough.
Having lost faith in all else, zealots have nothing left but a holy cause to please a warrior God. They win if we become holy warriors, too; if we kill the innocent as they do; strike first at those who had not struck us; allow our leaders to use the fear of terrorism to make us afraid of the truth; cease to think and reason together, allowing others to tell what's in God's mind.
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.
In tracking down and eliminating terrorists , we need to change our metaphor from a "war on terror" exactly what, pray tell, is that? to the mind-set of Interpol tracking down master criminals through intense global cooperation among nations, or the FBI stalking the Mafia , or local police determined to quell street gangs without leveling the entire neighborhood in the process.
Presidents are afraid to lose wars. They're afraid to be outflanked on the right by the militarists. They don't want to be seen as soft on either communism or soft on terrorism or whatever. So presidents are constantly tugged away from their domestic commitments to foreign policy.
If being tolerant of differing opinions, if believing that America has to make it as a pluralistic nation, if being civil, if that makes you a liberal, I plead guilty.
On the eve of the election last month my wife Judith and I were driving home late in the afternoon and turned on the radio for the traffic and weather. What we instantly got was a freak show of political pornography : lies , distortions, and half-truths half-truths being perhaps the blackest of all lies. They paraded before us as informed opinion.
When all our efforts have come to nothing, we naturally tend to doubt not just ourselves, but also whether God is just. At those moments, our only hope is to seek every evidence that God is just, by communing with the people we know who are strongest in faith.
Democracy only works when we claim it as our own
I believe democracy requires a 'sacred contract' between journalists and those who put their trust in us to tell them what we can about how the world really works.
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.....
We see more and more of our Presidents and know less and less about what they do.
Professionals give advice; pilgrims share wisdom.