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Keynote Address By Bill Moyers
Environmental Grantmakers Association, Brainerd, MN
October 16, 2001
This Isn't the Speech I Expected to Give Today...
by Bill Moyers
EXCERPTS from speech:
"This isn't the speech I expected to give today. I intended something else.
For the last several years I've been taking every possible opportunity to
talk about the soul of democracy. 'Something is deeply wrong with politics
today,' I told anyone who would listen. And I wasn't referring to the
partisan mudslinging, or the negative TV ads, the excessive polling or the
empty campaigns. I was talking about something deeper, something troubling
at the core of politics. The soul of democracy-the essence of the word
itself-is government of, by, and for the people. And the soul of democracy
has been dying, drowning in a rising tide of big money contributed by a
narrow, unrepresentative elite that has betrayed the faith of citizens in
self-government."
"Just one day after the attack, one day into the maelstrom of horror, loss,
and grief, Republican senators called for prompt consideration of the
President's proposal to subsidize the country's largest and richest energy
companies. While America was mourning they were marauding. One congressman
even suggested that eco-terrorists might be behind the attacks. And with
that smear he and his kind went on the offensive in Congress, attempting to
attach to a defense bill massive subsidies for the oil, coal, gas and
nuclear companies. To a defense bill! What a shameless insult to patriotism!
What a slander on the sacrifice of our armed forces! To pile corporate
welfare totaling billions of dollars onto a defense bill in an emergency
like this is repugnant to the nostrils and a scandal against democracy!
"But this is their game. They're counting on your patriotism to distract you
from their plunder. They're counting on you to be standing at attention with
your hand over your heart, pledging allegiance to the flag, while they pick
your pocket! "
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