Did anyone really think Bill Moyers would retire and go crawl in a hole quietly when he finally(?) retired from PBS? Surely you knew better.

Moyers, writing with Michael Winship at Common Dreams, uses an op-ed written by a corporate Democrat as a springboard to remind us of what truly made America great:

“Congressman John K. Delaney, what the hell are you talking about?

In a recent Washington Post op-ed piece, headlined, “The last thing America needs? A left-wing version of the Tea Party,” the Democratic congressman from Maryland scolds progressives and expresses his worry “about where some of the loudest voices in the room could take the Democratic Party.”

The “loudest voices in the room” aren’t populists or progressives; they belong to the auctioneers selling our government to the highest bidders.

He writes, “Rejecting a trade agreement with Asia, expanding entitlement programs that crowd out other priorities and a desire to relitigate the financial crisis are becoming dominant positions among Democrats. Although these subjects may make for good partisan talking points, they do not provide the building blocks for a positive and bold agenda to create jobs and improve the lives of Americans.”

Rep. Delaney even implies that a freewheeling, open discussion of “these subjects” could lead to the election of a Republican president.

Good grief, John. A trade agreement that favors multinational corporations over working people? Cutting “entitlement programs” such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, worker’s compensation? Letting Wall Street off the hook for crashing the economy and costing millions of Americans their jobs and homes? These are Republican policies, bought and paid for by plutocrats. If Democrats simply mimic them, there would be no need to bother with voting for a Republican president; we could cancel the election and put the billions saved in campaign contributions straight into the Clinton Foundation.

The progressive agenda isn’t “left wing.” (Can anyone using the term even define what “left wing” means anymore?) The progressive agenda is America’s story — from ending slavery to ending segregation to establishing a woman’s right to vote to Social Security, the right to organize, and the fight for fair pay and against income inequality. Strip those from our history and you might as well contract America out to the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and Karl Rove, Inc.

At their core, the New Deal, Fair Deal, and Great Society programs were aimed at assuring every child of a decent education, every worker a decent wage, and every senior a decent retirement; if that’s extreme, so are the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution.

But such is the level of what passes for discourse inside the Beltway these days. The cushioned political and media elites who eat, drink, and make merry with each other at the annual White House Correspondents & Celebrity Ball are so cozy up there in the stratosphere that they dismiss as the lunatic fringe any voice from below that challenges the status quo.

And by the way, John, the “loudest voices in the room” aren’t populists or progressives; they belong to the auctioneers selling our government to the highest bidders.”

Moyers still brings the heat that burns the butts of the hypocrites and the sellouts. He is a national treasure and one of the sanest and smartest voices in the punditry world.