Keep Your Dissidents Please!
Chief Thracian
think some here will heartily enjoy, and others refute
(considering how I am so well-reflected in them):
H.L. Mencken:
"The notion that a radical is one who hates his country
is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one
who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is
thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it
debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he
is a good citizen driven to despair."
Vaclav Havel:
"You do not become a 'dissident' just because you
decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You
are thrown into it by your personal sense of
responsibility, combined with a complex set of external
circumstances. You are cast out of the existing
structures and placed in a position of conflict with
them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and
ends with being branded an enemy of society."
Justice William O. Douglas
"Political or religious dissenters are the plague of
every totalitarian regime."
Woodrow Wilson:
"Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has
always come from the subjects of government. The
history of liberty is the history of resistance."
Refresh our memories...who was:
(You old timers should get this one:)
-H.L. Mencken (1880-1956): American journalist, critic,
and essayist, whose perceptive and often controversial
analyses of American life and letters made him one of
the most influential critics of the 1920s and 1930s.
(Baby-boomer radicals like myself adore this man:)
-Vaclav Havel (1936- ): writer, reformer, and president
of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992) and of the Czech Republic
(1993-2003). He was the center of the peaceful
revolution that usurp his nation's old communist one
with a new, democratic one...which movement was dubbed
"The Velvet Revolution"...after which I am inspired to
coin the term for my own brand of activism: "The
Lavender-Velvet Revolution". Mr. Havel was an artist (a
writer), who became political leader. I follow the same
path.
(If you don't know who the following is/was, you should
at least guess "a judge of the Supreme Court",
considering the appelation "Justice". That would be
considered "an educated guess":)
-Justice William O. Douglas (1898-1980): "For
thirty-six and one-half years - a record not likely
soon, if ever, to be broken - the feisty, determined,
outspoken judicial activist for liberal causes and
underdog individuals remained a highly visible member
of the [Supreme] Court..." -- Henry J. Abraham
(Wasn't this one below, a beloved TV cartoon character
in the 50's & 60's? Oh, wait, that was "Woody
Woodpecker". Never mind!)
-Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924): 28th president of the
United States (1913-1921), enacted significant reform
legislation and led the United States during World War
I (1914-1918). His dream of humanizing "every process
of our common life" was shattered in his lifetime by
the arrival of the war, but the programs he so
earnestly advocated inspired the next generation of
political leaders and were reflected in the New Deal of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
---
Lavender-Velvet Revolution
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