Bill Moyers On Democracy: Astute Analysis Or Naive Idealism

Bill Moyers has written about the crisis in American democracy in his latest book, "Moyers On Democracy".

He says, "I have been lucky enough to spend my adult life as a journalist, acquiring a priceless education in the ways of the world, actually getting paid to practice one of my craft’s essential imperatives: connect the dots".

He points out that an essential quality of democracy is equality for all. Then he quotes Edward R. Murrow, "No one can eliminate prejudices — just recognize them."

But Moyers, like Murrow before him, is part of a social elite, privileged to observe, criticize and recommend. He imagines himself to be in touch with the average person, but how can he be? He sits in the comfortable anchor chair of the American Public Television Network, P.B.S.

He says, "Extremes of wealth and poverty cannot be reconciled with a genuinely democratic politics". And yet, like Murrow, he has lived all of his professional life in the upper third of rich America.

What Moyers fails to grasp in his yearning for the idealism he imagines in America’s past, is that democracy can be shattered by the very people who claim so eloquently, to defend it. For example, Moyers quotes Abraham Lincoln at length as the great democrat.. And yet it was Lincoln who assisted in the destruction of democracy in America, by leading the country into a civil war. That act had the effect of creating a brand new class of corrupt Americans, who grew rich on the arms trade and subsequently came to dominate American society in most spheres of business. War taught America how to  amass great fortunes.

Instead of following a genuinely democratic path and permitting the unhappy southerners to secede – perhaps by means of a plebiscite or referendum, Lincoln chose violence…the most undemocratic of all choices.

War never solves problems; it only creates more. When a majority of southern Americans wanted to secede from the union, Lincoln as President, ought to have let them go. He could then have used peaceful means to change their minds. He could have encourage those held in slavery to seek refuge in the North.  Instead, he chose to do violence by declaring war on the secessionists . 

The American Civil War was a pivotal point in U.S. history. It gave rise to the belief that the solution to human problems might lie in waging war.

He eulogises Roosevelt as the herald of a "progressive era". When in fact, Roosevelt was a racist who declared to his friend Henry Stimson, "This is a protestant country.Catholics and Jews are here on sufferance".

Mr. Moyers is a decent man and a good journalist. He was a loyal servant of government as spokesman for Lyndon Johnson.

But in this book,  he gives us an over-idealized view of the history of democracy in America.