The other night, my cousin and I talked about Tehran and Tiananmen and other instances of somewhat spontaneous displays of mass democratic thought. We talked about the governmental response.
Jon praised the Chinese for its patience ... I countered that one wishes the Chinese government had used water canon rather than the more destructive automatic weapons to put down the students ... he retorted that our government did the same thing, in Chicago, at Kent State ...
This morning, while sitting on my front porch, I read in the Week in Review section of my Sunday NYT this chilling composite....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/weekinreview/28savage.html?_r=1&scp=6&sq=nixon%20tapes&st=cse
Nixon was a famous paranoid. Might he have been closer to suspending the Constitution than we ever suspected? How close to it might his protege, Dick Chenney, have come had our anti-Iraqi-war movement been more effective?
1 comment:
"perhaps 'praise' isn't what I intended...more like understood the position it was in and equated it to other governments, including ours. We condemn others easily and never look at the log in our own eye. I actually would condemn both governments actions against their own citizens."
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