At 12:45 PM 6/20/2006, Carol or John Burgeson wrote:
Just noted this one: Journalist Bill Moyers
believes that the conversation over religion and
science can lead to a cure for what ails us --
but not a conversation in which people simply
shriek at each other. Moyers, who describes
himself as "neither wholly a believer nor wholly
a skeptic," thinks we can move away from pitting
reason against faith and give equal weight to
both in our discussions. Science can illuminate
faith, and faith can inform science. He launches
the discussion on a new PBS special "Bill Moyers
on Faith & Reason," which premieres Friday at 9
p.m. From the San Francisco Chronicle Sounds interesting. ~ jb
@ Since these people (referenced below) have
been among the victims of Moyers' lies in the
past, you can be sure they will be watching ------ AND taking notes. ~
Janice
"James Watt is my grandfather and we as his
family have had to put up with him being labeled
as a "religious kook" for 20 years.
Once a quote is entered into LexisNexis by a
reporter most journalists are too lazy to go back
and investigate to whether it even happened. All
it takes is one journalist with a political agenda to slime somebody.
<http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1337568/posts?page=3D25#25>
25 posted on 02/07/2005 12:30:50 AM EST by
<http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1337568//~minusthebear/>
Minus_The_Bear
(JBlain)
Goodmorning JB, sorry you have had to endure the
lies and insults about your Grandad, James Watts.
We must correct these liars at every possible
turn. Here in the real Carolina (SC), we don't
take kindly to defamation of our Grandfather's
legacy and certainly have no patience for lying
bullies such as Moyers. I hope he can be brought
to some justice, at the very least for this lie
and if I can help, please ping me. The truth
will be known, thanks in part to the internet soldiers.
<http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1337568/posts?page=3D56#56>56
posted on 02/07/2005 4:02:03 AM EST by
<http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1337568//~iopscusa/>iopscusa
...and some of the most delightful people have
succumbed to his PBS evangelical socialist
pronouncements without ever bothering to check
for reality. Moyers has gotten away with it--until now.
<http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1337568/posts?page=3D71#71>71
posted on 02/07/2005 9:04:19 AM EST by
<http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1337568//~yoe/>yoe
Moyers' lie repeated by the
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1491-2005Feb5.html?
sub=3DAR>
Washington
Post
<http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1337568/posts?page=3D77#77>77
posted on 02/07/2005 12:21:26 PM EST by
<http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1337568//~minusthebear/
>Minus_The_
Bear
BILL MOYERS SMEARS A BETTER MAN THAN HIMSELF
<http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1337568//^http://
powerlineblog.com=
/print.html>Powerline
^ | February 6, 2005 | Jon Hindraker
Posted on 02/07/2005 12:03:09 AM EST by huac
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1337568/posts
Throughout Moyers' career, he was free to slander
conservatives with impunity, knowing that there
was no forum in which their responses would ever be heard.
On January 30, the Minneapolis Star Tribune
<http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5211218-2.html>published
as an op-ed the text of a speech by liberal
commentator Bill Moyers. Moyers delivered the
speech upon the occasion of his receiving an
environmental award from a group at Harvard
Medical School. Like pretty much everything
Moyers writes, the article was an attack on the
Bush administration. Specifically, he alleged
that the Bush administration's policies, as they
relate to the environment, are "based on
theology" and therefore "delusional." Moyers'
theme was that the Bush administration, and
Republicans in general, don't care about the
environment because they are crackpot Christians
who believe that the world is about to come to an
end. That being the case, why worry about future generations?
Moyers wrote:
So what does this mean for public policy and the
environment? Go to Grist to read a remarkable
work of reporting by the journalist Glenn Scherer
-- "The Road to Environmental Apocalypse." Read
it and you will see how millions of Christian
fundamentalists may believe that environmental
destruction is not only to be disregarded but
actually welcomed -- even hastened -- as a sign of the coming
apocalypse.
As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a
handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are
beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S.
Congress before the recent election -- 231
legislators in total and more since the election
-- are backed by the religious right.
In support of his startling claim that the
religious right is deliberately trying to despoil
the environment, Moyers offered three bits of
"evidence." One was the popularity of the "Left
Behind" novels, which use the second coming of
Jesus as a plot device. But Moyers offered not a
shred of support for the proposition--dubious on
its face--that these works of fiction have
somehow influenced the Bush administration's environmental policies.
The second bit of "evidence" offered by Moyers
was, in a sense, even odder. He harkened back to
the early 1980s, when James Watt was President
Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior. Moyers
painted Watt as a harbinger -- sort of a John the
Baptist, since we're talking theology -- of the
"let's destroy the environment" movement. Here is what Moyers said about
Watt:
Remember James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's
first secretary of the interior? My favorite
online environmental journal, the ever-engaging
Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt
told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural
resources was unimportant in light of the
imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public
testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come
back."
Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't
know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious.
I read Moyers' piece after several readers
pointed out to us how over-the-top it was. I knew
that Moyers' claims about Watt couldn't possibly
be true, for two reasons. First, the concept of
stewardship is so fundamental to Christian
theology that the claim is laughable on its face.
Second, I remember the Reagan administration.
James Watt was a controversial figure; but one
thing he was not controversial for was advocating
environmental pillaging, on the theory that Jesus
would be back any day now. That would have been
quite a news story in the early 1980s, had it been true.
I did some quick Google searches without finding
anything noteworthy; in particular, I couldn't
find Mr. Watt's Congressional testimony online. I
put the matter aside, not having time to pursue it further.
Friday morning, I was sitting in my office when
my telephone rang. On the phone was a soft-spoken
man who said, "I'm calling for Mr. John Hinderaker."
"Speaking," I responded, in the brusque tone I use when fielding cold
calls.
The man said, "My name is James Watt."
Mr. Watt is retired now, and has been out of
public life for many years. He is a kindly
gentleman who, with the aid of his grandson,
enjoys surfing the web and keeping up on the news
of the day. And he is understandably unhappy
about being casually defamed by Bill Moyers.
Mr. Watt explained that the quote attributed to
him by Moyers is fraudulent. As
<http://brian.carnell.com/archives/years/2005/02/000001.html>another
blogger has written, and as Moyers' favorite
source, Grist,
<http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2004/10/27/scherer-christian/
index.html>
has
now admitted in a correction, it originated in a
book published in 1990 by one Austin Miles, an
anti-religious tract titled Setting Free the
Captives. Miles' book does not, however, claim
that Mr. Watt made the statement in question in
testimony before Congress; that little
embellishment was added by Grist, and repeated by
Moyers with no effort on his part to check its veracity.
But the real issue here is not the quote, but
what Moyers says about its context. Moyers claims
that as Secretary of the Interior, James Watt
"told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural
resources was unimportant in light of the
imminent return of Jesus Christ." Moyers' claim
is false. Mr. Watt forwarded to me the transcript
of his testimony before the House Interior
Committee in February 1981, the only time he can
recall the Second Coming ever arising in such a
setting. In fact, the philosophy of environmental
protection that Watt espoused in his testimony
was the precise opposite of what Moyers and his friends at Grist
claimed:
Mr. Weaver [D. Ore.]: Do you want to see on lands
under your management, the sustained yield policies continued?
Secretary Watt: Absolutely.
Mr. Weaver: I am very pleased to hear that. Then
I will make one final statement... I believe very
strongly that we should not, for example, use up
all the oil that took nature a billion years to make in one century.
We ought to leave a few drops of it for our
children, their children. They are going to need
it... I wonder if you agree, also, in the general
statement that we should leave some of our
resources--I am now talking about scenic areas or
preservation, but scenic resources for our
children? Not just gobble them up all at once?
Secretary Watt: Absolutely. That is the delicate
balance the Secretary of the Interior must have,
to be steward for the natural resources for this
generation as well as future generations.
I do not know how many future generations we can
count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is
we have to manage with a skill to leave the
resources needed for future generations.
Mr. Weaver: Mr. Chairman, I want to conclude, if
I might, seeing the Secretary brought up the Lord, with a story.
The Chairman: The conversation will be in order.
Mr. Weaver: In my district, Mr. Chairman, there
are some who do not like wilderness. They do not
like it at all. I would try to plead with them. I
go around my district and say do you not
believe--I would plead with their religious
sensibilities--that we should leave some of our
land the way we received it from the Creator?
I have said this frequently throughout my
district. I got a letter from a constituent... He
said, "Mr. Weaver, if the Lord wanted to leave
his forest lands, some of them in the way that we
got them from Him," he said, "why did He send His
only Son down to earth as a carpenter?"
(Laughter)
Mr. Weaver: That stumped us. That stumped us
until one of my aides, an absolute genius, said
that the Lord Jesus before He determined His true
mission spent 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness.
(Laughter)
So Secretary Watt made exactly the opposite point
from that asserted by Bill Moyers: "we have to
manage with a skill to leave the resources needed
for future generations." It is worth noting, too,
the tone of Mr. Watt's Biblical reference--not
fire-breathing or apocalyptic, as suggested by
Moyers, but rather part of a friendly, even
jocular exchange with members of the Interior Committee.
Mr. Watt's Congressional testimony is consistent
with the approach toward environmental policy
that he followed throughout his career. In a
letter to President Reagan written in October 1983, Watt said:
Because we have cared and exercised stewardship,
the parks, refuges, forests, coastal barriers,
wetlands and deserts are being better managed.
This is also true for the wildlife living on these lands.
[B]ecause of our commitment to good conservation
practices, we have set a remarkable record of
increasing protection for the fragile and
ecologically important conservation lands of the
Nation.... In 1983 alone, we have, through trade,
donations and purchase, added more park and
wildlife land to the federal estate than any
previous Administration added in a single year
since Alaska was purchased in 1867.
Our stewardship commitment extends to preserving
for future generations those historic sites and
structures that pay tribute to America's past and
the principles upon which our Nation was founded.
Because of our concern for and commitment to
stewardship, we have accelerated the efforts to
bring about the recovery of ...endangered plants
and animals. By the end of this year, we will
have approved or reviewed nearly three times as
many recovery plans as were developed in the four-year period 1977 to
1980.
There's lots more, but you get the drift. For
Bill Moyers, Grist, and the Minneapolis Star
Tribune to allege that James Watt, as Secretary
of the Interior, argued that "protecting natural
resources was unimportant in light of the
imminent return of Jesus Christ" is an outrageous libel.
It's revealing, too, to trace the course of the
libel over time. The Star Tribune relied on Bill
Moyers, and printed a charge by him that, had the
editors thought about the matter, they should
have realized was ridiculous on its face. Moyers
relied on his "favorite online environmental
journal," Grist, which in turn relied on (and
apparently embellished) a book by Austin Miles, a
former circus ringmaster who became disillusioned
with Christianity after an encounter with James
Bakker. At no stage did any of these worthies
think it necessary to do some fact-checking
before besmirching the reputation of a former cabinet officer.
James Watt wasn't the only person whose words
were twisted by Moyers. In addition to Mr. Watt
and the "Left Behind" novels, Moyers brought
forward as a third item of evidence for his
thesis a quote from former Democratic Senator Zell Miller:
The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the
Christian coalition was Sen. Zell Miller of
Georgia, who recently quoted from the biblical
book of Amos on the Senate floor: "The days will
come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a
famine in the land." He seemed to be relishing the thought.
And why not? There's a constituency for it. A
2002 Time-CNN poll found that 59 percent of
Americans believe that the prophecies found in
the book of Revelations are going to come
true.... Drive across the country with your radio
tuned to the more than 1,600 Christian radio
stations, or in the motel turn on some of the 250
Christian TV stations, and you can hear some of
this end-time gospel. And you will come to
understand why people under the spell of such
potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist
puts it, "to worry about the environment. Why
care about the earth, when the droughts, floods,
famine and pestilence brought by ecological
collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible?
But the quote attributed to Senator Miller had
nothing whatever to do with the environment. Here
is the full quote, as
<http://www.wafj.com/common/Content.asp?PAGE=3D355&CONTENT=3D914>recited
by Senator Miller: "The days will come, sayeth
the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the
land. Not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for
water, but of hearing the word of the Lord." The
subject of Miller's speech was not environmental
policy, but Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction.
It would be possible, I suppose, for Bill Moyers
to distort the truth and mischaracterize the
words of others more baldly than he did in his
Star Tribune op-ed, but it wouldn't be easy. One
can only wonder what made Moyers think he could
get away with such blatant misrepresentations.
No, wait. It isn't hard to figure out after all.
Moyers is just a year or two behind the times; he
doesn't know about the blogosphere. Throughout
Moyers' career, he was free to slander
conservatives with impunity, knowing that there
was no forum in thich their responses would ever be heard.
James Watt has written to Bill Moyers, asking him
to apologize for the lies in his Star Tribune
article. After quoting Moyers' statements about him, Watt wrote:
I have never thought, believed or said such
words. Nor have I ever said anything similar to
that thought which could be interpreted by a
reasonable person to mean anything similar to the quote attributed to
me.
Because you are at least average in intelligence
and have a basic understanding of Christian
beliefs, you know that no Christian would believe what you attributed
to me.
Because you have had the privilege of serving in
the White House under President Johnson, you know
that no person believing such a thing would be
qualified for a Presidential appointment, nor
would he be confirmed by the United States
Senate, and if confirmed and said such a thing
would he be allowed to continue in service.
Since you must have known such a statement would
not have been made and you refused or failed to
do any primary research on this supposed quote,
what was your motive in printing such a damnable lie?
Before the advent of the blogosphere, Bill
Moyers--arrogant, rich, powerful and
well-connected--would merely have thrown Mr.
Watt's letter into the trash. Today, he may still
do so. But he and his friends in the liberal
media no longer have a monopoly on information,
and those who have been defamed by them, like
James Watt, now have the means to make their
voices heard. Sunday, February 6, 2005
<http://www.powerlineblog.com/>www.powerlineblog.com
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