no more swearing

When I first started blogging, I swore to my self that there would never be any politics or religion discussed here. And, truth be told, there won't be. It's just that I have found this book (You DO know I read a lot, right?) and in it I have found a voice for the little guy that lives in my head, who sees things that bother him, who doesn't like the way things have been going - the direction things have taken - but has never had the background necessary to articulate those things properly nor to tie the various points of discomfort together into a cohesive picture.

Recently, I have found myself more and more radicalized; first, by my newfound pacifism - first expressed here, in this blog - and second by a growing devotion to the concept of "Using the Common Wealth for the Common Good". And I have been uneasy. There is and has been such a flood of 'stuff' going on - bad stuff - that it hasn't been possible, given the distraction of day to day life and living, to get arms around all of it and make any kind of sense - of either the problems or the solutions.

But there is a book. A book written by a man whose name I have known for many years and whose opinion I have always respected. He is also a man I have differed with in some things - he is a man of deep religious conviction and I tend to shy away from those who would tout themselves as "Christian" because I have usually found those people to be more than willing to try to impress their beliefs on me - whether I am willing to share them or not. My beliefs are my own, and personal. Very personal. But, that said, this man has never taken the bully pulpit he has and tried to shove his "Christianity" down my or anybody else's throat. And I respect him for that, too.

The man is Bill Moyers. And the book is "Moyers on Democracy". The book is a compilation of speeches given at various and sundry times for various and sundry purposes, but in those speeches he has touched on the things that threaten us and our Democracy; the growing disparity between rich and poor, the threats to our environment that come from government and corporations and greed, the need for more and more money in order to run for elected office; the lies, the secrecy and the authoritarianism that seem to dominate government today.

He provides more clarity and more vision of the issues in the introduction than I have heard or seen from anybody, at any time, anywhere. Of course, he's been at this for a LONG time. He was, at one time, Press Secretary for President Lyndon Johnson. And he's been an observer - a journalist - ever since.

Now - if I could just arrange it so that Bill Moyers and Fred Z. from MoneyThoughts were like Co-Presidents of the good old USA (I was going to say King and Queen, but one of them would have to kill me) we would, I PROMISE you, find our way back to the right track.

This has been a slightly political post. Sorry. I won't do that again. But I just had to, this time.