Bill Moyers looks at Knoxville Church shooting

Sorry to say, but I missed the Bill Moyers Journal take on the tragic July shooting at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. The Church's minister, the Rev. Chris Buice, is featured on the program. The discussion focused on the role of talk radio in the degeneration of America's political discourse.

JEFFREY FELDMAN: Our system is a deliberative democracy. And that deliberative democracy depends on a certain kind of talk, a certain conversation in order to function well. What right-wing rhetoric does, when it reaches that violent pitch, is it undermines that particular conversation, such that the focus of political debate, becomes increasingly hamstrung by fear, and the ability of citizens to engage in the basic act of civics becomes gummed up. That conversation breaks down.

RICK KARR: Knoxville pastor Chris Buice agrees.

REVEREND CHRIS BUICE: When you blame all your problems on some minority group then everyone else is exonerated. We exonerate ourselves. We don't have to look at ourselves to see what sort of ways we contribute to the problems of the world. We don't have to examine ourselves, to see what we are doing that is helping to create the problems that we're so concerned about.