Moyers on New Rules for Radicals
By: Nikki Willoughby
February 13, 2012 
1 Comment
Bill Moyers Essay: Who Shipwrecked Our Economy? from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.
Yes, the results are in and our elections have replaced horse racing as the sport of kings. Only these kings aren’t your everyday poobahs and potentates. These kings are multi-billionaires, corporate moguls who by the divine right — not of God, but of the United States Supreme Court and its Citizens United Decision — are now buying politicians like so much pricey horseflesh.All that money pouring into SuperPACs, much of it from secret sources: merely an investment, in the best government money can buy, should their horse pay off in November.
All this can numb the soul, and chill the ardor of the most devoted citizen, who’s exposed to the buying and selling of our democratic birthright.
But there is an antidote: Sara Robinson, a senior editor of Alternet.org, has written an essay entitled “New Rules for Radicals: Ten Ways to Spark Change in a Post-Occupy World.” Check it out. My hunch is you’ll cease to weep over our sinking ship of state, and start working to repair it.
Read “New Rules for Radicals: 10 Ways To Spark Change in a Post-Occupy World” »
The world is changing quickly, and we need to help steer it according to our shared values — our vision of what might be.
There is so much I disagree with in Robinson’s article that I hardly know where to begin. Let’s start with her pitifully inadequate definition of “plagiarism.” It is not “borrowing” someone’s ideas. Plagiarism is “stealing someone’s original work and passsing it off as your own.”
The Occupy Movement is woefully similar to the attempt by World War I veterans to “occupy” Washington D.C. in an attempt to shake loose a veterans’ bonus that they thought was rightfully theirs. It was a miserable failure that cost numerous lives.
I was on active duty in the Air Force during the Vietnam War and missed out entirely on the “movement” that so many people credit for ending that conflict. As I remember, Congress simply decided that the United States had wasted too much blood and treasure on a worthless quagmire (no oil involved) and just pulled the plug.
I am a retired aerospace engineer who graduated from the University of Texas about a decade after Moyers did, and I had some of the same professors as he did. What I know today is largely what I learned then and during a subsequent master’s program and “enrichment” courses I took during and afterward.
If a child started today and followed the path that I took, with a mentoring mother and teachers, he/she would have just as much chance to succeed as I did. Snake-oil salesmen have been with us since the beginning of time and will always be with us, trying to distract us from doing the right thing.
It is what we do with what we have that matters, and thank God for people who went before us, invented new things, perfected old things, and willingly gave us their knowledge.