Bill Moyers: The NRA’s conscience is as cold and dead as Charleton Heston’s hands

[kpete]

http://billmoyers.com/segment/bill-moyers-essay-on-the-nra/

Bill Moyers blasted the National Rifle Association (NRA) in a commentary released on Friday, accusing the NRA of devolving into political bullies and lamenting what he described as an increasing disregard for gun safety in Texas.

“So it goes: ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill,’” Moyers said on Moyers & Company. “But if you do, hide behind the Second Amendment, made holier and more sacrosanct by the NRA than God’s own commandment.”

Moyers also looked back to former NRA President Charleton Heston’s famous boast that gun safety supporters would have to wrest his rifle from his “cold, dead hands,” arguing that his rhetoric fed less into the beliefs held by Moses — who Heston played in The Ten Commandments — and more into the Wild West mythos the NRA has helped propagate.


“The good Lord seems not to have anticipated the National Rifle Association,” Moyers said. “Its conscience as cold and dead as Charlton Heston’s grip on his gun, the NRA has become the armed bully of American politics, the enabler of the gunfighter nation, whose exceptionalism includes a high tolerance for the slaughter of the innocent.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/13/bill-moyers-the-nras-conscience-is-as-cold-and-dead-as-charleton-hestons-hands/



& THIS IS A MUST READ TOO!!!

The Great American Class War: Plutocracy Versus Democracy
December 13, 2013
by Bill Moyers

........................

We are this close – this close! – to losing our democracy to the mercenary class. So close it’s as if we’re leaning way over the rim of the Grand Canyon waiting for a swift kick in the pants.

................

The Donor Class and Streams of Dark Money

The historian Plutarch warned us long ago of what happens when there is no brake on the power of great wealth to subvert the electorate. “The abuse of buying and selling votes,” he wrote of Rome, “crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread in the law courts and to the army, and finally, when even the sword became enslaved by the power of gold, the republic was subjected to the rule of emperors.”

We don’t have emperors yet, but we do have the Roberts Court that consistently privileges the donor class.

We don’t have emperors yet, but we do have a Senate in which, as a study by the political scientist Larry Bartels reveals, “Senators appear to be considerably more responsive to the opinions of affluent constituents than to the opinions of middle-class constituents, while the opinions of constituents in the bottom third of the income distribution have no apparent statistical effect on their senators’ roll call votes.”

We don’t have emperors yet, but we have a House of Representatives controlled by the far right that is now nourished by streams of “dark money” unleashed thanks to the gift bestowed on the rich by the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case.


MORE!!!
http://billmoyers.com/2013/12/13/the-great-american-class-war-plutocracy-versus-democracy/

[JimboBillyBubbaBob]

1. What a powerful phrase.

I think I will keep it for a probable later.

[Uncle Joe]

2. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread and peace to you kpete.

[Paladin]

3. K&R.

[billh58]

4. K&R!

The NRA and its apologists worship at the feet of the right wing extremists of ALEC, and the equally vile Koch Brothers. Cheers to Bill Moyers for calling them out.

[SoapBox]

5. K & R

[malaise]

6. Brilliantly stated Bill Moyers

Rec

[Jefferson23]

7. That is chilling, isn't it...we don't have emperors yet....

K&R

[malokvale77]

8. Bill Moyers...

Nobody says it better.

[spanone]

9. k&r...

[mountain grammy]

10. Bill Moyers speaks truth to us all.