Speaking Truth to Power.

By now most readers will have read that Sen. Jeff Flake ripped Trump a new one last Wednesday in a speech in the U.S. Senate and perhaps read some extracts from that speech in news reports. If you have not already done so I encourage you to read the entire speech, it is no less applicable to other democracy's (including our own) as it is to the now questionable 'democracy' to the south.

To peak your further interest here a a few of my favorite quotes from that speech.....

“Without truth, and a principled fidelity to truth and to shared facts our democracy will not last.”
 
“Despotism is the enemy of the people. The free press is the despot’s enemy, which makes the free press the guardian of democracy.”

“An American president who cannot take criticism — who must constantly deflect and distort and distract — who must find someone else to blame — is charting a very dangerous path. And a Congress that fails to act as a check on the president adds to the danger.”

“The impulses underlying the dissemination of such untruths are not benign. They have the effect of eroding trust in our vital institutions and conditioning the public to no longer trust them. The destructive effect of this kind of behavior on our democracy cannot be overstated.”

“Add to that the by-now predictable habit of calling true things false, and false things true, and we have a recipe for disaster. As George Orwell warned, “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.”

“What is the goal of laying siege to the truth? President John F. Kennedy, in a stirring speech on the 20th anniversary of the Voice of America, was eloquent in answer to that question: “We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
 
At the start of his speech Sen. Flake quotes former senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, who famously said: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”
MY opinion is that this senator has nailed it and that Trump is not only destroying democracy in the U.S. but negatively effecting democracy world wide. It is a fact that he has but a fleeting acquaintance with the truth! Democracy is indeed under fire in the U.S of Eh and elsewhere across the world.
Read the full speech here.....

Support Democracy - Recommend this Post at Progressive Bloggers