Jim Lehrer: An Uneasy Nation Feeds Political Extremism

Complete Premium video at: http://fora.tv/conference/chautauqua_video_sampler_2010

PBS "NewsHour" host Jim Lehrer dismisses the rise of extremism in American political dialog as a fleeting affair. "It's always happened in our democratic society when there is legitimate unsettlement among the people," he says.

To view more highlights from the Chautauqua 2010 Video Sampler series, visit http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=CBFA7A4D0DCD0CF1

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This lecture features Jim Lehrer in conversation with renowned author and Chautauqua favorite Roger Rosenblatt.

Lehrer, executive editor and anchor of "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," the Emmy Award-winning PBS news show, is author of 19 novels, two memoirs and three plays. His most recent novel, Oh Johnny, was published in April 2009. - Chautauqua Institution

Jim Lehrer is an American journalist and the news anchor for "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" on PBS. Lehrer is an author of non-fiction and fiction, drawing from his experiences and interests in history and politics.

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[AWA821]

People are beginning to realize that the US is a Corpocracy. It has never been a democracy. It is a republic at best but most of the representatives no longer represent the people's interest.

[csamw65]

I love Jim Lehrer! He writes the funniest songs!

[bboucharde]

@Marbles471 Thanks for your thoughts. I will try to respond when my workload allows.

[Marbles471]

Lehrer is wrong. Darn him and his newsman's obsession with "balance" no matter how much it flies in the face of reality. There IS no "exteme" on the left with any voice in mainstream discourse right now. All the "shouting" he talks about is between the extreme right and the center right. The left barely exists anymore---it's been marginalized off the stage. Lehrer should know better----he's old enough to remember when there was actually a left wing in this country.

[Marbles471]

@bboucharde

Only in America would anyone be able to call a corporate-friendly centrist like Barack Obama "extreme left" with a straight face. Decades of hard work by the conservative movement and the right wing think tanks have succeeded in skewing the political scale in this country so that the center is now the right, and the there is no longer any true voice of liberalism in government.

Virtually anywhere else in the democratic world, Obama would be considered fairly conservative.

[bboucharde]

@152czar Also, the "War on Terror" is a misnomer--(It is like saying "a war on blitzkrieg.") "Terror" is a technique of war,* and the US has used this since the 1700's, whenever it felt compelled to do so. The CIA carries out world-class black ops, which are state-sponsored terror attacks. The recent US attack on Libya is terrorist. Obviously, the "war on terror" is an international war agains Islam (usually fundamentalist Wahabi Islam). *as Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft has explained.

[bboucharde]

@152czar The senior leaders in Congress (House & Senate) routinely socialize with each other and play the Right vs. Left game for the media and the general herd of American sheep. However, there ARE differences between conservative Republicans and "progressive" Democrats, too obvious for me to list them here. However, both sides in Congress are seriously compromised by lobbyists, special-interest cash injections, and other corruption. The higher up you go, the dirtier it gets.

[152czar]

@bboucharde The super-rich oligarchic elite are neither right or left. The right-left spectrum is a false paradigm.

On the issues that truly matter: the war on terror, free trade agreements (e.g. NAFTA), and the bankster bailouts there was widespread bipartisan agreement between the republican and democratic parties.

Wake up America. We live in a one party system. There is one political party in the US: the War Party.

[jeniferwedi]

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[helanmatiu]

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[tempemonkey2323]

The religious right and all the teabaggers need to take a hike.... Then everything would be just fine... Rather everything could move toward fine...