Bill Moyers returns to US public television with weekly "Bill Moyers Journal" starting in April
Bill Moyers is returning to PBS public television in April with a weekly public affairs series, "Bill Moyers Journal," that resurrects the name of his first public television series for a new century. "People keep writing or stopping me on the street to suggest stories that are not being reported and voices that are not being heard," said the former press secretary for U.S. President Lyndon Johnson. "A lot of Americans long for more than convention wisdom, celebrity pundits, predictable opinions and safe analysis of the obvious."
The first episode on April 25 discusses the role of the press before the invasion of Iraq. Moyers' previous weekly series shut down in 2004. It became the center of controversy when it was revealed that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was monitoring the show for the political leanings of its guests.
Journalist Bill Moyers was the Deputy Director of the Peace Corps under founding Director Sargent Shriver.
Bill Moyers slams President Bush for "mind-boggling" contempt for proof of global warming and blamed what he called Bush's dependence on conservative Christians and multinational corporations
"Without the Christian right, the corporations that now control Washington would not have had the votes to eviscerate our environmental protections," Moyers said in a Chrysler Hall speech hosted by The Norfolk Forum. He also said Bush was "beholden to his corporate patrons and campaign contributors" and that corporations control the nation's environmental policy "lock, stock and barrel."
Religion is equally challenging because of the country's growing spiritual diversity, he said. "We have to ask, Can we avoid the intolerance, the chauvinism, the fanaticism, the bitter fruits that spring up when different religions are next-door neighbors?" Moyers said his wide-ranging interviews on subjects such as the book of Genesis showed him that each religion "offers a profound insight into human nature." "They have led me away from condescending toleration of other faiths to an anticipation and affirmation of positive engagement with them," said Moyers, who called himself both a journalist and a spiritual "pilgrim."
Bill Moyers delivers the Sol Feinstone Lecture on The Meaning of Freedom at the United States Military Academy at West Point
"This is a tough subject to address when so many of you may be heading for Iraq. I would prefer to speak of sweeter things. But I also know that 20 or 30 years from now any one of you may be the Chief of Staff or the National Security Adviser or even the President—after all, two of your boys, Grant and Eisenhower, did make it from West Point to the White House. And that being the case, it’s more important than ever that citizens and soldiers—and citizen-soldiers—honestly discuss and frankly consider the kind of country you are serving and the kind of organization to which you are dedicating your lives."
"People in power should be required to take classes in the poetry of war. As a presidential assistant during the early escalation of the war in Vietnam, I remember how the President blanched when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said it would take one million fighting men and 10 years really to win in Vietnam, but even then the talk of war was about policy, strategy, numbers and budgets, not severed limbs and eviscerated bodies."
"In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war and peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture to heterogeneous powers, the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man. Twice in 40 years we have now gone to war paying only lip service to those warnings; the first war we lost, the second is a bloody debacle, and both rank among the great blunders in our history. It is impossible for soldiers to sustain in the field what cannot be justified in the Constitution; asking them to do so puts America at war with itself. So when the Vice President of the United States says it doesn’t matter what the people think, he and the President intend to prosecute the war anyway, he is committing heresy against the fundamental tenets of the American political order."
Caption: Statue of Washington at West Point.