“One day many years ago, a smart young political consultant turned to an older elected official and succintly described a new reality in America’s public discourse: ‘If it’s not on television, it doesn’t exist.’ ”

“…[S]o long as the dominant means of engaging in politiical dialogue is through purchasing expensive television advertising, money will continue in one way or another to dominate American policits. And as a result, ideas will continue to play a diminished role.” (emphasis added)

“The mental muscles of democracy have begun to atrophy.”

“…[T]he human nature of our Founders — a nature that they understood sp well— is the same as our own. We have the same vulnerabilities and the same potiential, the same weaknesses and the same strengths.”

“People who watch television news routinely have the impression that the cities where they live are far more dangerous than they really are. Researchers have also found that even when statistics measuring specific crimes actually show steady decreases, the measured fear of those same crimes goes up as television portrayal of those crimes goes up. And the portrayal of crime often increases because consultants for television station owners have advised their clients that viewership increases when violent crime leads newscasts. This phenomenon has reshaped local television news.”

“… Bush uses a religious blind faith to hide what is actually an extremist political philosophy with a disdain for social justice that is anything but pious…”

“The essential cruelty of Bush’s game is that he takes an astonishiongly selfish and greedy collection of economic and political proposals and then cloaks them with a phony moral authority, thus misleading many Americans who have a deep and genuine desire to do good in the world.  And in the process he convinces these Americans to lend unquestioning support for proposals that actually hurt their families and their communities.”