[Peace-discuss] William Sloane Coffin/

[Morton K. Brussel]

Elegy from Bill Moyers:

…Take one fork and the road leads to an America where military power  
serves empire rather than freedom; where we lose from within what we  
are trying to defend from without; where fundamentalism and the state  
scheme to write the rules and regulations; where true believers in  
the gods of the market turn the law of the jungle into the law of the  
land; where in the name of patriotism we keep our hand over our heart  
pledging allegiance to the flag while our leaders pick our pockets  
and plunder our trust; where elites insulate themselves from the  
consequences of their own actions; where ”the strong take what they  
can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
Take the other fork and the road leads to the America whose promise  
is “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all Bill Coffin  
spent his life pointing us down that road. in that direction. There  
is nothing utopian about it, Bill said; he was an idealist but he was  
not an ideologue. He said in our interview that we have to keep  
pressing the socialist questions because they are the questions of  
justice, but we must be dubious about the socialist answers because  
while Amos may call for justice to roll down as waters, figuring out  
the irrigation system is damned hard!

He believed in democracy. There is no simpler way to put it. He  
believed democracy was the only way to assure that the rewards of a  
free society would be shared with everyone, and not just elites at  
the top. That last time we talked he told me how much he had liked  
the story he had heard Joseph Campbell tell me in our series on “The  
Power of Myth” – the story of the fellow who turns the corner and  
sees a brawl in the middle of the block. He runs right for it,  
shouting: “Is this a private fight, or can anyone get in it?”…

For the rest, see  http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0421-20.htm
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/private/peace-discuss/attachments/20060421/c3292ce3/attachment.htm