Bill Moyers on Democracy

On February 7, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation presented Judith and Bill Moyers the first Frank E. Taplin, Jr. Public Intellectual Award for “extraordinary contributions to public cultural, civic and intellectual life.”

I’ve watched and listened to Bill Moyers for years as one of our nation’s most accomplished journalists. I have learned from him and I have appreciated his breadth of knowledge and his wisdom. What follows are quotes taken from his remarks in the speech he presented upon receiving this award. He titled his address, “Discovering What Democracy Means.”

His insights concerning education and its importance, potential and impact on everyone are profound. He reminds me that we must never shut anyone out as we consider who matters in our society and in our great urban areas.
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Speaking of Mike Rose, a university professor who teaches disadvantaged, older college students, Moyers noted,

“He had recounted to me his battle with a street-wise grownup who was flogging her way through Macbeth.

‘What does Shakespeare have to do with me?’ she would ask.

But when she finally got through the play she said to Mike Rose, ‘You know, people always hold this stuff over you. They make you feel stupid. But now, I’ve read it. I can say, “I, Olga, have read Shakespeare.” I won’t tell you I like it, because I don’t know if I do, or I don’t. But I like knowing what it’s about.’

And Mike Rose said: ‘The point is not that reading Shakespeare gave her overnight some new discriminating vision of good and evil. What she got was something more precious: a sense that she was not powerless and she was not dumb.’”
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Many years ago we produced a series called. “Six Great Ideas” with the didactic, irascible but compelling philosopher and educator, Mortimer Adler—one hour each on liberty, equality and justice, truth, beauty, and goodness. From the deluge of mail I kept two letters that summed up the response. One came from Utah.

“Dear Dr. Adler, I am writing in behalf of a group of construction workers (mostly, believe it or not, plumbers!) who have finally found a teacher worth listening to. While we cannot all agree whether or not we would hire you as an apprentice, we can all agree that we would love to listen to you during our lunch breaks. I am sure that it is just due to our well-known ignorance as tradesmen that not a single one of us had ever heard of you until one Sunday afternoon we were watching public television and Bill Moyers came on with Six Great Ideas. We listened intensely and soon became addicted and have been ever since. We never knew a world of ideas existed. The study of ideas has completely turned around our impression of education. . . .We have grown to love the ideas behind our country’s composition, and since reading and discussing numerous of your books we have all become devout Constitutionalists. We thank you and we applaud you. We are certain that the praise of a few plumbers could hardly compare with the notoriety that you deserve from distinguished colleagues, but we salute you just the same. We may be plumbers during the day, but at lunch time and at night and on weekends, we are Philosophers at Large. God bless you”

The second letter came from Marion, Ohio—from the federal prison there. The writer said he had been a faithful viewer of the series, and he described it as a “truly joyous opportunity. . .for an institutionalized intellectual. After several months in a cell, with nothing but a TV, it was salvation.”

Salvation. Deliverance. Redemption.

I had to think about this for a while before I realized what he meant. He was, after all, a lifer. How is it a man condemned to an institution for the remainder of his years finds salvation in a television program? And then one day I came across something Leo Strauss had written. The Greek word for vulgarity, Strauss said, is apeirokalia, the lack of experience in things beautiful. Wherever you are and however it arrives, a liberal education can liberate you from the coarseness and crudity of circumstances beyond your control.

[To read more from Moyers’ speech visit www.TomPaine.com.]