Bill Moyers: In FDR, My Dad Had a Friend in the White House

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071210/moyers

Moyers & FDR


Bill Moyers gave the following remarks at the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute's twentieth-anniversary Four Freedoms ceremony, where he received the Freedom of Speech award. --The Editors

Thank you for this recognition and the spirit of the evening. Thanks especially for giving me the chance to sit here awhile thinking about my father. Henry Moyers was an ordinary man who dropped out of the fourth grade because his family needed him to pick cotton to help make ends meet. The Depression knocked him off the farm and flat on his back. When I was born he was making two dollars a day working on the highway to Oklahoma City. He never made over $100 a week in the whole of his working life, and he made that only when he joined the union on the last job he held. He voted for Franklin Roosevelt in four straight elections, and he would have gone on voting for him until kingdom come if both had lived that long. I once asked him why, and he said, "Because the President's my friend." Now, my father never met FDR. No politician ever paid him much note, but he was sure he had a friend in the White House during the worst years of his life. When by pure chance I wound up working there many years later, and my parents came for a visit, my father wanted to see the Roosevelt Room. I don't know quite how to explain it, except that my father knew who was on his side and who wasn't, and for twelve years he had no doubt where FDR stood. The first time I remember him with tears in his eyes was when Roosevelt died. He had lost his friend.

We can't revive the man and certainly we wouldn't want to revisit the times, but we can rekindle the spirit. There are 37 million people in this country who are poor; there are 57 million who are near poor, making $20,000 to $40,000 a year--one divorce, one pink slip, one illness away from a free fall. That's almost one-third of America still living on the edge. They need a friend in the White House. My father, with his fourth-grade education and two fingers with the missing tips from the mix-up at the cotton gin, got it when Roosevelt spoke. "I can't talk like him," he said, "but I sure do think like him." My father might not have had the words for it, but he said amen when FDR talked about economic royalism. Sitting in front of our console radio, he got it when Roosevelt said that private power no less than public power can bring America to ruin in the absence of democratic controls.

Don't think for a moment he didn't get it when Roosevelt said that a government by money was as much to be feared as a government by mob, or when he said that the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. My father got it when he heard his friend in the White House talk about how "a small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor--other people's lives." My father knew FDR was talking for him when he said life was no longer free, liberty no longer real, men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness--against economic tyranny such as this. And my father listened raptly when his friend the President said, "The American citizen"--my father knew the President was speaking of him--"could appeal only to the organized power of government."

So thank you for reminding us that liberalism is less about ideology and doctrine than about friendship and faith--the bond between a patrician in the White House and a working man on the Texas-Oklahoma border and their mutual belief in America as a shared project. Thank you for this reminder of how we might yet turn the listing ship of state. My father thanks you, too.

about FDR is he WAS RICH. And he still stood up the working poor and the needy. He did not try to use the presidency to gain money for himself. He did not use the presidency to build up the corporations, he always first did for the people.

Look at all the rich in congress today, mostly republicans, who cut and slash and law and benefit for the working class. And look at while FDR was trying to contain Hitler and his helpers, bush's grandfather was making money hand over fist for the enemy. He got so bad raising money for Halter's killing machine they confiscated his bank. And he was so enraged he tried to overthrow this government. You never ever hear any of that in the bush legacy do you...

And ever since bush stole office he has tried to do away with any program that the Democrats have initiated to help the working class. The last agency left is social security and they are messing their pants to try to break it up.

Really good vid from 2004 regarding the Patriot Act, Republican fearmongering, and the example set by FDR to the People of America.

He's pretty darned inspiring!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDyE-_Aba8A


Support Dennis Kucinich Before It's Too Late!

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/16/159222

<snip> Thirty five hundred activists, journalists and concerned citizens gathered in Memphis, Tennessee this weekend for the third National Conference on Media Reform. Speakers called for the preservation of a free and open Internet, the end of media consolidation and a more democratic and diverse media system.

Among those who spoke were Helen Thomas, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Phil Donahue and Jane Fonda, to name a few.

But it was veteran journalist Bill Moyers who opened the conference on Friday with a stirring address. Today we spend the hour playing his remarks. A longtime journalist, Bill Moyers has produced many groundbreaking series on public television over the years. He is the winner of more than 30 Emmy Awards and the author three best-selling books.

Thanks for the thread, babylonsister.

brought on tears. these days it seems like all the good guys died or got bought by the bad guys, and put on the tv representing good guys. this upside down inside out motherfucking administration...