Bill Moyers Quotes
They have raised ignorance to ideology and stupefied an entire political party. No more roguish and rowdy band of predators ever did more to demean and despoil the democracy on whose carcass they feed.
In the latter part of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, right wing talk show hosts had extensive conservative audiences who were very susceptible to hyperbole, exaggerations, vitriol, ideology, and conspiracy theories. They in turn pressured the conservative politicians along the lines of the media shows version of conservatism. The result was that the most powerful conservatives in America were media personalities like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. They had more influence on the Republican party than any of the Republican elected officials. Moyers, used to working with Republicans in many bi-partisan efforts attributed the extreme hyperpartisanship, and nasty, gridlocked political scene that developed in these media personalities.
Bill Moyers, Journalist, Special Assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson, White House Press Secretary, Criticism of right wing talk show hosts and Fox News, Interview, The Progressive, March 6, 2014
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Jinnah who at later years of his life became a rabid leader and facilitator of religious bigotry and violent Jihad, was totally opposed to mixing religion in politics. His view was so strong on this point that he even criticized Gandhi for mixing religion with politics when he was a sing star of the Indian Congress Party. Jinnah's flip flop on this point led to one of the great massacres and tragedies in human history.
At the time, one of the favorite right wing accusations that the media were all biased in favor of liberal points of view. Any time a news story was covered that implied or showed that right wing ideology might be wrong, the conservatives would cry “liberal bias” without addressing whether the objection was sound or not. Often the most extreme right wing views are ideological and flaunt reality. Colbert turned this into a very funny phrase.
This quotation is important for two reasons. First, this is one of the most negative attacks on an opponent in a Presidential election in all of American History—to call the opponent ‘dangerous’ to the nation. Second, it is a classic example of two close political friends and allies, after a falling out. Roosevelt had in effect made Taft President in 1908, but Roosevelt was extremely disappointed as Taft was controllable by the Republican Party bosses, who hated Roosevelt. TR then challenged the then sitting President for the Republican Presidential nomination. At that time there were 12 states that had primary elections and Roosevelt won 9 of them. La Follette won 2 and Taft only 1. The majority of the states did not then have primaries allowing the party bosses to make the decision of which candidate to support. Party leaders generally did not like Roosevelt who was a major reformer, so they voted for Taft at the convention pushing him over the top when he clearly was the less popular of all 3 candidates. Roosevelt, outraged by the party bosses overriding the will of the people, then walked out of the convention and organized his own convention and TR ran as the Progressive Party (Bull Moose Party). In the general election Roosevelt got more votes than Taft, but the two of them had split the majority Republican vote and the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson was the winner.
In Australia, the Liberal Party is a right wing conservative party, unlike England or the United States.
When he became president himself, he not only served 10 years but changed the constitution so that he could serve forever and was still President over 20 years later. See {620732} for another similar statement.
Ideologues and men of strong principles are not open to compromise and often are not persuasive of others. Compromise and persuasion is necessary for success in politics.
This was a parody on the adage, “You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink.”
He was the Russian Reformer who ended serfdom and gave land to the peasants and then was assassinated for his liberality
Resigning from the Greek parliament:
Billy Don Moyers is an American journalist and political commentator. He served as the ninth White House Press Secretary under 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. news media.
