The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.
Most people have a sense that things have gone terribly wrong. It's not just some giveaways to the rich and the rigging of regulatory rules. It's something fundamental. The very idea of America is being stolen, and people are sensing that with a tremor within their hearts. They are taking away this core notion of the common good, this idea that we are all in it together. They are diverting America from our historic striving towards egalitarianism, which is why America exists. It's the thing that makes us unique in history. That's what people are sensing. We are going down the wrong path.
Some people say we need a third party. I wish we had a second one.
Liberals want to manage the damage with government programs to take care of those who have fallen between the cracks. Populists want to fix the cracks so that people don't fall in the first place.
Like NASCAR race drivers or PGA golfers, why not require each of the [US presidential] candidates to cover their clothing, briefcases and staff with the logo patches of their corporate sponsors?
The corporations don't have to lobby the government anymore. They are the government.
The [Democratic] party is a bank. It collects money and gives it to TV stations.
The issue isn't just jobs. Even slaves had jobs. The issue is wages.
The only difference between a pigeon and the American farmer today is that a pigeon can still make a deposit on a John Deere.
The corporation cannot be ethical, its only responsibility is to make a profit.
Some of these rich folks seem to think that everything belongs to them and they'll even get to take it with them when they die. But you know what? You don't ever see a hearse pulling a U Haul.
Part of the failure of the corporate media is that they don't dig out stories anymore. They are looking down from the top floors. Media work used to be something that was down on the ground level. Now they are looking out of the windows in the top suites, and they don't know what's going on out there. And then there are the corporate owners who don't want this stuff reported because if one town learns that the next town has defeated Walmart or stopped sweatshop goods, then other towns are going to want to do the same thing.
The real bias of the media is not to the left or to the right, but to the thin strata of economic elites at the top of our society.
The original Greek word "idiotes" referred to people who might have had a high IQ, but were so self-involved that they focused exclusively on their own life and were both ignorant of and uncaring about public concerns and the common good.
Banks don't commit crimes. Bankers do. And they won't ever stop if they don't have to pay for their crimes.
Politics isn't about left versus right; it's about top versus bottom.
It's hard for the donkeys to win the race if they're going to carry the elephants on their backs.
Reagan promised everyone a seven-course dinner. Ours turned out to be a possum and a six-pack.
But the good news is that out in the countryside, just about every place that's got a zip code has somebody or some group of people battling the economic and political exclusion that Wall Street and Washington are shoving down our throats.
We've got to go to the people with bold ideas and candidates of conviction - we've got to be hotter than high school love.
Even a little dog can piss on a big building.
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America was not built by conformists, but by mutineers.
The water won't clear up until we get the hogs out of the creek.
The middle of the road is for yellow lines and dead armadillos.
Populism is at its essence just determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government. One big difference between real populism and what the Tea Party thing is, is that real populists understand that government has become a subsidiary of corporations. So you can't say, let's get rid of government. You need to be saying let's take over government.
Populists have always been out to challenge the orthodoxy of the corporate order and to empower workaday Americans so they can control their own economic and political destinies. This approach distinguishes the movement from classic liberalism, which seeks to live in harmony with concentrated corporate power by trying to regulate excesses.
You have to learn to read between the lies.
Democracy is not something that happens, you know, just at election time, and it's not something that happens just with one event. It's an ongoing building process. But it also ought to be a part of our culture, a part of our lives.
What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people... Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie... Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it’s down to us.
The media isn't only asleep; it doesn't want to know this news, that the people are revolting, in the very best sense of the term, revolting against the thieves in high places and reaching out to each other, which is our great strength.
So now is the time, more than ever, for those who truly value all the principles of democracy, especially including dissent, to be the most forceful in speaking up, standing up and speaking out.
If you don't speak out when it matters, when would it matter to speak out?
Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy.
— Jim Hightower
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