Yesterday one of our long-time heroes, Bill Moyers, brought down the curtain on PBS' "Moyers & Company," and a 40-plus year broadcast career (he still will be around via his web site www.BillMoyers.com, thankfully). Here's part of what he had to say in parting:
So as the next generation steps forward, I am tempted to think that the only thing my generation can say to them is: we’re sorry. Sorry for the mess you’re inheriting. Sorry we broke the trust. But I know in my heart that’s not what they ask or expect. So instead I recommend to them the example of Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, another of my heroes from the past. He battled the excesses of the first Gilded Age a century ago so boldly and proudly that he went down in history as “Fighting Bob.” He told us, “…democracy is a life; and involves continual struggle.” I keep asking myself, what if that struggle is the palpable reality without which this world would be truly barren?
So to this new generation I say: over to you, welcome to the fight.In our age of short attention spans and desultory citizen participation in the life of American democracy, we need to remind ourselves, as Moyers does, that democracy is a continual struggle and that we must be prepared to fight off the historical revisionists, the reactionaries, the selfish, the racists, the "-phobes" of all prejudicial stripes, the sociopaths -- all those who would have us live in a dystopian world of "I've got mine, to hell with you." It's a fight in which we must engage and prevail. Thanks to Bill Moyers for being such a warrior for the truth for all these years.
