Jan 1, 2020

Farewell to a Warrior: William Greider (8/6/1936 - 12/25/2019)

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Some gems from one of the finest journalists of the 20th century:


Democracy is held captive, not just by money, but by ideas - the ideas that money buys.

When self-important people and powerful institutions are governed by illusion, history has a way of biting back.

Creating a positive future begins in human conversation. The simplest and most powerful investment any member of a community or an organisation can make is to begin with other people as though the answers mattered.

The economy is not governed with the bottom half in mind.

A profound political question is suddenly on the table: Must the country continue to give precedence to private financial gain and market determinism over human lives and broad public values?

Democracy begins in human conversation. A democratic conversation does not require elaborate rules of procedure or utopian notions of perfect consensus. What it does require is a spirit of mutual respect-people conversing critically with one another in an atmosphere of honesty and shared regard.

Americans cannot teach democracy to the world until they restore their own.

The present struggle seems less about abolishing big government than about who gets to use it.

The rich nations of the world are acting like ancient usurers, lending money to the desperate poor on terms that cannot possibly be met and, thus, steadily acquiring more and more control over the lives and assets of the poor.

People know elections, like television commercials, are not real.

The quest for homeland security is heading ... toward the quasi-militarization of everyday life ... If danger might lurk anywhere, maybe everything must be protected and policed.

A society unwilling to confront its social reality in a timely manner is doomed to experience the consequences in later generations and possibly forever.

The Republican party is not a party of conservative ideology. It is a party of conservative clients. Whenever possible, the ideology will be invoked as justification for taking care of the clients’ needs. When the two are in conflict, the conservative principles are discarded and the clients are served.

 

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