Money, Lies, and God Quotes

“What can one person do in the face of such a powerful and well-funded threat? To which I can only say: Put this book down and get to work now! Support your school community. Get involved in local governance. If you belong to a church or house of worship, work to bring your fellows to the side of justice and democracy. Find others who are committed to protecting the vote or involved in voter engagement and education campaigns. Reach out to those who feel politically disenfranchised. Tell them democracy matters. Tell them the republic is theirs—if they can keep it.”
― Katherine Stewart, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy

“the great disparity in wealth distribution is a significant contributor to the wave of unreason that has swept our politics and our culture. It has fractured our faith in the common good, unleased an epidemic of status anxiety, and made a significant subset of the population susceptible to conspiracism and disinformation.”
― Katherine Stewart, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy

“But in recent years a political movement has emerged that fundamentally does not believe in the American idea. It claims that America is dedicated not to a proposition but to a particular religion and culture. It asserts that an insidious and alien elite has betrayed and abandoned the nation’s sacred heritage. It proposes to “redeem” America, and it acts on the extreme conviction that any means are justified in such a momentous project. It takes for granted that certain kinds of Americans have a right to rule, and that the rest have a duty to obey. No longer casting the United States as a beacon of freedom, it exports this counterrevolutionary creed through alliances with leaders and activists who are themselves hostile to democracy. This movement has captured one of the nation’s two major political parties, and some of its leading thinkers explicitly model their ambitions on corrupt and illiberal regimes abroad that render education, the media, and the corporate sector subservient to a one-party authoritarian state. How did such an anti-American movement take root in America? That is the question I aim to address in this book.”
― Katherine Stewart, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy

“Liberal donors can be a bit technocratic and think you make social change by coming up with solutions that are evidence-based. And that’s not really how politics works,” Callahan says. “People are less rational than a lot of liberal funders would like to believe.”
― Katherine Stewart, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy

“A deeper consideration of the antics of the Claremont men, however, suggests that the moneymen may not always have a clear idea of what they are buying. Do they know anything about human history? Fascism always looks promising for big money, but it always ends badly. The end state of the vaunted "deconstruction of the administrative state" is corruption and cronyism. Caesars of every kind and throughout history have used the resources of the state to reward those who keep them in power. The study of history and political science exists for a reason, and it is in part to convey such simple and well-attested facts.”
― Katherine Stewart, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy

“Rarely have so few done so much so thoughtlessly to undermine the educational resources on which democracy depends.”
― Katherine Stewart, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy

“The desired end state of Christian nationalism today is neither to win a majority nor to secure a seat at the table in a pluralistic democracy but to entrench minority rule under the facade of democracy.”
― Katherine Stewart, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy

“Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 Presidential Election”
― Katherine Stewart, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy