to The Village Square

“Beware the terrible simplifiers.”

May 2nd, 2008

Bill Moyers commentary on the week of political goings-on with the Reverend Wright media blitz contained in it both a finger-wag at politics as usual (hard not to love that) and the daggone best quote I’ve ever heard. Moyers:

Politics often exposes us to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I’ve never seen anything like this - this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner. Both men, no doubt, will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we’re paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burkhardt who said: “Beware the terrible simplifiers.”

Entry Filed under: Religion and politics, Politics as UNusual?