Bill Moyers and the Liberal Consensus

We were talking about eggs.  

"I am only an egg," said the Martian in Stranger in a Strange Land. It's what Mork came in.

BILL MOYERS: So humor me for a moment. I'm the proverbial Martian coming to earth sent by Martian control to report back home on what I can learn about this banking and political culture down here on this weird planet. And I come to you for help because you have this interstellar reputation for telling it as it is. How would you sum up this financial and political culture so that I can give a believable report back up there?

from  
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-banking-on-greed/

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What's wrong with Bill Moyers?

It's time I finally "took a stand" on Bill Moyers - whose most recent target has been our own Sen. Max Baucus, caught once again with his hand in the drug coffers.  Like it or not, Bill Moyers is one of the very few serious journalists with a national audience who is still working.  Of course, the fact that he basically designed and created PBS, as LBJ's Press Secretary in the 1960's, may have something to do with it.  Still, I have serious reservations against recommending him and his shows and "philosophy" - whatever they might be.  

While listening to a discussion yesterday on the "legality" of drones with several different "liberal" players in this debate, I  was struck, once again, by their rigid legalisms, reflected in their "concerns" as to whether or not foreign or domestic "drone strikes" (targeted assassinations) were "constitutional" or otherwise legitimate and defensible.  I'm screaming at the radio: "What part of "Thou Shalt Not Kill" don't you understand?"  

Murder is always "wrong" and "illegal", and contrary to civilized behavior - even in an allegedly "free society".  It is the original "capital crime" - taking another's life fully justifies forfeiting one's own. And what about Ecocide - wantonly and intentionally destroying the planet which sustains us all?  Surely that is even more "capital," as crimes go.  

Even "conservatives" and other members of the 1% opposed bank robbery, whether  it is the banks that are robbing or being robbed - the other topic under discussion in this Moyers and Company broadcast.   They did ask and reflect on why none of the bankster crooks and their elected or appointed regulatory cronies have been prosecuted.  

The common denominator, here, is Statism - the idea of Authority (and why it must not be questioned or opposed/exposed), the National Interest, which is invariably equated with the interests of Big Business, Finance Capitalism, the 1%, or whatever you want to call them.  L'etat, c'est them.  

Moyers, like most Texans and other Americans, is a Statist.  He believes that the "duly constituted government" - the State - is and perhaps even should be Omnipotent.  It has, as Ayn Rand said, "a monopoly on force."  I remember being astounded when some of her acolytes defended that, and thought it was a good thing.  But of course, as a public figure and extremely popular and influential, how could she say otherwise?

When Moyers worked for the Johnson Administration, he was a loyal servant.  You  have to be to get and hold that job, and few people hold it for very long - even a single presidential term.  So, that is a reason not to listen to him at all, and if it were simply a matter of agreeing or disagreeing with Bill Moyers and his "philosophy", I wouldn't be listening at all.  But he has very distinguished and diverse guests, now tending more to the "classical liberal" (corporate libertarian) position than the peace, justice and other public spirited activists who do not hold positions of wealth and influence.  Many of his guests over the years have been intellectual and spiritual leaders of the first rank, as well as a lot of pop gurus like Joseph Campbell, the Dali Lama, scientists and poets, theologians and statesmen, etc.  So, we get to hear a pretty good presentation, with Moyers' guidance and questioning, of our current situation and how we might go about repairing it.

So, why is Statism bad?  Our present government supposedly rests on "the consent of the governed."  It can only legitimately do what the people want and demand of it, according to a venerable Constitution which says, among other things, that our government was established to:
  
"Provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and ensure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."   And it makes very clear that "unenumerated powers" rest with the individual states or the people.  Somehow, "liberals" never want to discuss or hear about this part of the story.  Weren't the  "Framers" just a bunch of ignorant farmers, small businessmen, and slaveowners/drivers?  Why should we listen to anything they said, or follow any of the rules or Constitution they promulgated?

Great!  Let's be revolutionaries, then!  Let's have a new Constitution!  That view, too, is taboo.  

Abraham Lincoln was obviously stuck on the "more perfect union" idea, also part of the Preamble, and somehow concluded that an enforced union of unwilling participants was "more perfect."  We have been living with that mistake ever since.  That's when the United States ceased to be a voluntary confederation of independent states, and became, instead, a "World Power" and Imperial Nation-State encompassing hundreds of millions of people. 

By violating  this basic covenant, the USA has lost its moral legitimacy, and that's the only legitimacy which actually matters.  It is "making a mistake" from the get-go, and as we all know, if you get off on the wrong foot, you need to stop and regroup, not continue the wrongful course into oblivion. 

Another good metaphor, which I have used since I was in college, is that gangster capitalism functions like a cancer.  It  takes over the immune system, the blood supply, even the brain and its control of behavior and bodily systems.  Our government has been shanghaied and diverted into destroying the systems and communities which it was supposed to facilitate and defend, "eating out the substance" of the people and local economies like a foreign army of occupation.  

There was a news broadcast following Moyers about the Post Office dropping Saturday mail delivery in order to "save money" and "return to profitability."  Again, I was screaming at the radio:  "It's not about making money  or profitability.  It's a Cabinet-level department of the Federal Government, a public service, the basic Federal presence in our local communities, and it IS "enshrined in the Constitution." In fact, it was created by one of the main authors of the Constitution as well as the Declaration of Independence - that guy on the $100 bill, Benjamin Franklin.  "A penny saved is a penny earned," was one of his maxims. 

Basically, we no longer have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people (Lincoln's charming - and fictional - coinage).  We have a predatory rogue state, totally out of control, and bent on world domination and totalitarian control over every aspect of our lives, our work, our relationships, even our thoughts and dreams.  It is psychotic and sociopathic - just listen to the ALEC-drenched Republicans in Helena and Congress.  The Taliban aren't attacking Montana.  It's Montana and all the other NATO conspirators against world peace who are attacking Afghanistan, Yemen, and a hundred other countries and local communities who only wish to relate to the rest of the world peacefully and for mutual benefit and enlightenment.  

Are there other criminal states in the world besides the United States?  Certainly.  We didn't invent the category.  Indeed, we were originally established precisely to get away and isolate ourselves from such states and empires.  So, why have we rejoined them, and with some apparent "vengeance" when all the wrong seems to be on our side?  There's only one explanation.  Ideology, the corporate media, state propaganda (enshrined in our once free and local Public Schools), public broadcasting, etc.  It's all state propaganda.  It all serves the 1% and gangster capitalism (AKA the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Pharmaceutical-Education-Prison Complex).  

There is no more independent judiciary.  The function of the law is no longer to protect our rights and freedoms, while maintaining fairness and justice in our everyday exchanges and relationships.  It is to further enrich the 1% and, most concretely, lock up, register, and monitor the behavior and thinking of nearly every American citizen, not to mention the rest of the world.  We are a Prison State, and one which must be forcefully resisted at every turn if we are to regain our freedom and sanity.  

Believe it or not, Muslim children are not obsessed with attacking American symbols of power like the WTC and Pentagon.  They used to like Americans and want to be like us, with our "high standard of living", good schools, free enterprise (Mohammed, MHNBP, was a merchant), etc.  Muslims largely created what we call "the modern world" based on science and mathematics, medicine, humane treatment of women and minorities, free trade, and limited government.   We have our problems and they have theirs, exacerbated by the insatiable demand for irreplaceable fossil fuels - one resource which the Arab world retained in abundance from its glorious Caliphate of 1000 years ago.  

But do they, should they, could they have designs on our wealth, as well?  If something is stolen from you with the use of illegitimate state power, does that mean it's OK?  Should they now become "patriotic" and love their new masters and tormentors? 

Even though more Muslims now live in the United States than Jews, they have little political power, and Israel continues to dominate and control American foreign policy against the interests of Palestinians and other indigenous people in the Middle East, as well as all the rest of us who don't care to support or surrender to  military occupation, surveillance, taxation, confiscation, rape, and slavery.  The Taliban, Al Qaeda (if, indeed, any such organization ever existed outside of CIA operations), and other "radical Islamic" movements and organizations ask nothing of the USA and its people except the withdrawal of US and NATO forces, with their drones and other instruments of resource theft, slavery, murder and assassination. 

It would be simple enough to do this, if we actually had a Congress and President who acted responsibly.  But of course we don't.  They don't seem to have any idea  what this would entail, or how to go about it.  And once, again, it is the media, public education, the law schools, the political scientists, and the public universities in general who are to blame, by sins of omission and commission.   

I suppose one must thank Bill Moyers for something, and that would be his commitment to truth-based journalism and vigilance in protecting the public interest.  It hasn't been easy for him to do this, and powerful  forces have resisted and suppressed his shows for many decades.  Not even journalists as great as Ed Murrow and Dan Rather could defend themselves against the CBS advertisers and stockholders.  

In one of his  last books, Leslie Fiedler asked, "What Was Literature?"  Now, 30 years or so later, we might ask "What Was Journalism?"   We seem to have forgotten entirely the power and supremacy of ideas, of scientific research, and of ancient and perennial wisdom.  Too bad, because that's what our civilization was based on.