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What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

nytimes.com

71–80 of 215 posts

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any system as large and complicated as this one will have failures. Our job is to learn from the past and try to prevent it from happening again in the future.

That's engineering for you. Examine the failure modes, and try to design the next system so it can't fail in any of the known ways. In fact, that's what the authors of the Constitution were trying to do...

... and the authors of quite a few international treaties and systems that the US refuses to submit to (the main one being Rome).

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#72
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually the best hope for America, the expectation that we should do good, do the best we can.

I don't see how perpetuating the myth helps with achieving that.

Because "That's just the way things are done" is the best way to continue horrible practices. Oh, I'm just going to do this little bit of bribery/corruption/racism; it's not really as bad as practice X in the past. Understanding them is the best way to promote bad behaviors. People are naturally afraid of the unfamiliar.

There's a limit; This is the same argument made by moral crusaders who're against sex education, and that ultimately causes harm. But it's the argument ignored by the D.A.R.E. program organizers, and that has a storied history of being shown (sometimes) to increase drug use[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Abuse_Resistance_Educatio...

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#76
post #48
post #19

It continually amazes me that Americans can perpetuate the myth that their government is a democratic, moral force in the world given everything they have done, and are still doing...

"Many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time." - Winston Churchill

I don't think the parent's point was that democracy is failing to do good, but that America is failing to do democracy.

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#78
post #19

It continually amazes me that Americans can perpetuate the myth that their government is a democratic, moral force in the world given everything they have done, and are still doing...

As compared to exactly which other government? Anywhere?

Comparisons are a Red Herring.

The point is people erroneously "believe" in their government. That it does only the most necessarily evil and then only to bad people. Such beliefs are manifestly dangerous. They result in things such as Drug seizure laws, PATRIOT act, militarization of police, demonizaton of whistle blowers.

DON'T trust authority, DON'T give authority powers assuming they will only be used for good, DO assume authority is lying, cheating, and evil.

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#79
Much of this was known before, including the FBI's anonymous letter attempting to provoke a suicide. As others said elsewhere in this thread, documents came out during the Church Committee. I wrote this 15 years ago when I worked at Time:

      The FBI's campaign to destroy Dr. Martin Luther
      King began in December 1963, soon after the
      famous civil rights March on Washington. It
      started with an extensive -- and illegal -- electronic
      surveillance of King that probed into every corner
      of his personal life. 

      Two weeks after the march, the same week King
      appeared on the cover of Time magazine as "Man
      of the Year," FBI agents inserted a microphone in
      King's bedroom. ("They had to dig deep in the
      garbage to come up with that one," FBI director J.
      Edgar Hoover said of the Time cover story.) Hoover
      wiretapped King's phone and fed the information to
      the Defense Department and to friendly
      newspapermen. 

      When King travelled to Europe to receive the
      Nobel Peace Prize, Hoover tried to derail meetings
      between King and foreign officials, including the
      Pope. Hoover even sent King an anonymous
      letter, using information gathered through illegal
      surveillance, to encourage the depressed civil
      rights leader to commit suicide. 

      "The actions taken against Dr. King are
      indefensible. They represent a sad episode in the
      dark history of covert actions directed against
      law-abiding citizens by a law enforcement
      agency," a Senate committee concluded in 1976. 

   […]

      History reveals that time and again, the FBI,
      the military and other law enforcement
      organizations have ignored the law and spied on
      Americans illegally, without court authorization.
      Government agencies have subjected hundreds of
      thousands of law-abiding Americans to unjust
      surveillance, illegal wiretaps and warrantless
      searches. Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King
      Jr., feminists, gay rights leaders and Catholic
      priests were spied on. The FBI used secret files
      and hidden microphones to blackmail the
      Kennedy brothers, sway the Supreme Court and
      influence presidential elections. 
http://www.politechbot.com/p-00660.html

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#80
post #62

[deleted]

What would be the benefit of being a political party? If we want HN to become a political power (and I am not saying we do), then it seems like a more productive approach is to become a lobby like the EFF/ACLU/NRA/etc. Becoming a political party means that we would need to have a stance on every issue. Being a lobby means we can focus on the issues that we know about and care about.

If we want HN to become a political power (and I am not saying we do), then it seems like a more productive approach is to become a lobby like the EFF/ACLU/NRA/etc.

Isn't that the reason? We may need a lobby too.

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