The pornography of violence of course far exceeds, in volume and general acceptance, sexual pornography, in this Puritan land of o...urs. Exploiting the apocalypse, selling the holocaust, is a pornography.... For the ultimate selling job on ultimate violence one must read those works of fiction issued by our government as manuals of civil defense, in which ... you learn that there's nothing to be afraid of if you've stockpiled lots of dried fruit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now for civil service reform. Legislation must be prepared and executive rules and maxims. We must limit and narrow the area of pa...tronage. We must diminish the evils of office-seeking. We must stop interference of federal officers with elections. We must be relieved of congressional dictation as to appointments.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When that devil's bullet lodged itself inside the body of Martin Luther King, he had already begun an astonishing mobilization of ...poor, Black, white, latino Americans who had nothing to lose. They would challenge our government to eliminate exploitative, merciless, and war-mongering policies, nationwide, or else "tie up the country" through "means of civil disobedience." Dr. King intended to organize those legions into "coercive direct actions" that would make of Babylon a dysfunctional behemoth begging for relief. Is it any wonder he was killed?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The survivors of some of them are here to-day, and whatever else has come to us in life, whether honor or disappointment, I do not... think there are any of us--not me, I am sure--who would to-day exchange the satisfaction, the heart comfort we have in having been a part of the great army that subdued the rebellion, that saved the country, the Constitution, and the flag. If I were asked to exchange it for any honor that has come to me, I would lay down any civil office rather than surrender the satisfaction I have in having been an humble partaker with you in that great war.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The great questions of freedom for the slaves and the unity of the Nation, liberty and nationality, are now settled. No political ...or party revolutions can unsettle the established facts, that all men are to have in this country equal civil and political rights, and that the United States form one people, one nation. The small questions of today about taxation, appointments, etc., etc., are petty and uninteresting. I cannot consent, after having borne my part in the glorious struggle against slavery during the last seventeen years, now to endure the worry and anxiety belonging to political life for the sake of the honors merely, and without subjects interesting me deeply involved in the struggles.... I am not a candidate, and shall avoid being made one, for the senatorship or for any other high office.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mr. Roosevelt, this is my principal request--it is almost the last request I shall ever make of anybody. Before you leave the pres...idential chair, recommend Congress to submit to the Legislatures a Constitutional Amendment which will enfranchise women, and thus take your place in history with Lincoln, the great emancipator. I beg of you not to close your term of office without doing this.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is my contention that civil disobedients are nothing but the latest form of voluntary association, and that they are thus quite... in tune with the oldest traditions of the country.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is all the difference in the world between the criminal's avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedient's taking the law... into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... most Southerners of my parents' era were raised to feel that it wasn't respectable to be rich. We felt that all patriotic Sout...herners had lost everything in defense of the South, and sufficient time hadn't elapsed for respectable rebuilding of financial security in a war- impoverished region.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line--the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in A...sia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »