Time for Action -- An AlterNet Editorial

As the country continues to reel from the attacks of Sept. 11, evil and greed seem to have gained the upper hand under the smoke screen of patriotism. Decades of gains in social progress are threatened, fear is pervasive and hypocrisy has taken center stage.

Many of us are torn. We are concerned about terrorism, and have given our government the benefit of the doubt, as it struggled to responded to our biggest crisis in 60 years. But the opportunity for smart and humane leadership is being squandered.

It is time to draw the line and say so in our name. If we are not vigilant, democracy will be the victim, and many millions of people at home and across the globe will suffer. The biggest crisis of our lifetime requires the largest organizing effort we have ever contemplated. It's time to push aside our confusion and pain, and rally the tens of millions who want a better and safer world, not one made more unstable and oppressive, not one turned into a profit opportunity for giant corporations and the most wealthy in the country.

At times like this, we look to leaders to step up and articulate in clear, fundamental ways what is happening and what is at stake. Call them our Paul Reveres, warning of the dangers ahead, or our Tom Paines, insisting that dissent is American, or our Sojourner Truths, telling us what it takes to be free, or our Martin Luther Kings, speaking truth to power.

Many men and women are saying and writing extraordinary things at this crucial moment in history. Increasingly, citizens of America and the world are listening. One of those leaders is Bill Moyers, who has a special talent for framing the essence of powerful truths and getting millions of Americans to listen carefully.

On Oct. 16 in Brainerd, Minn. Bill Moyers gave the keynote address to the Environmental Grantmakers Association. In that speech he captured the moment at hand. Here is an excerpt from that lengthy and extraordinary presentation.

My friend, Thomas Hearne, the president of Wake Forest University, reminded me recently that while the clock and the calendar make it seem as if our lives unfold hour by hour, day by day, our passage is marked by events -- of celebration and crisis. We share those in common. They create the memories which make of us a history, and make of us a people, a nation.

Pearl Harbor was that event for my parents' generation. It changed their world, and it changed them. They never forgot the moment when the news reached them. For my generation it was the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, the dogs and fire hoses in Alabama. Those events broke our hearts. We healed, but scars remain.

For this generation, that moment will be Sept. 11, 2001 -- the worst act of terrorism in our nation's history. It has changed the country. It has changed us.

That's what terrorists intend. Terrorists don't want to own our land, wealth, monuments, buildings, fields or streams. They're not after tangible property. Sure, they aim to annihilate the targets they strike. But their real goal is to get inside our heads, our psyche and to deprive us -- the survivors -- of peace of mind, of trust, of faith; they aim to prevent us from believing again in a world of mercy, justice and love, or working to bring that better world to pass.

We have also been reminded that despite years of scandals and political corruption, despite the stream of stories of personal greed and pirates in Guccis scamming the treasury, despite the retreat from the public sphere and the turn toward private privilege, despite squalor for the poor and gated communities for the rich, we have been reminded that the great mass of Americans have not yet given up on the idea of "We, the People." And they have refused to accept the notion, promoted so diligently by our friends at the Heritage Foundation and by Grover Norquist and his right-wing ilk, that government -- the public service -- should be shrunk to a size where they can drown it in the bathtub (that's what Norquist said is their goal) ...

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