Bill Moyers: Democracy in the Balance

Sojourners: Faith, Politics, Culture

How
do we nurture the healing side of religion over the killing side? How
do we protect the soul of democracy against bad theology in service of
an imperial state?

by Bill Moyers

. . . THIS
IS A TIME of testing – for people of faith and for people who believe
in democracy. How do we nurture the healing side of religion over the
killing side? How do we protect the soul of democracy against the
contagion of a triumphalist theology in the service of an imperial
state? At stake is America's role in the world. At stake is the very
character of the American Experiment – whether “we, the people” is the
political incarnation of a spiritual truth – one nation, indivisible –
or a stupendous fraud.

There are two Americas today. You could see this division in a little-noticed action
this spring in the House of Representatives. Republicans in the House
approved new tax credits for the children of families earning as much
as $309,000 a year – families that already enjoy significant benefits
from earlier tax cuts – while doing next to nothing for those at the
low end of the income scale. This, said The Washington Post in an
editorial called “Leave No Rich Child Behind,” is “bad social policy,
bad tax policy, and bad fiscal policy. You'd think they'd be
embarrassed but they're not.”

Nothing
seems to embarrass the political class in Washington today. Not the
fact that more children are growing up in poverty in America than in
any other industrial nation; not the fact that millions of workers are
actually making less money today in real dollars than they did 20 years
ago; not the fact that working people are putting in longer and longer
hours just to stay in place; not the fact that while we have the most
advanced medical care in the world, nearly 44 million Americans – eight
out of 10 of them in working families – are uninsured and cannot get
the basic care they need.

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