Of course I remember you! You aren't the forgettable sort.
You say "It is completely an American concept", and that is, perhaps, the crux. It is an American concept, very much bound up in the early history of the colonies. A lot of my ancestors came over because they were being persecuted for their beliefs. Which isn't to say that there was no persecution once they got here; a lot of Quakers were put to death. William Penn founded Pennsylvania as, essentially, a hippie Quaker commune where anyone could be afforded "freedom of conscience." Because such a large proportion of the colonies were founded by religious dissidents, when it came time to encode the new order in the Constitution, it was the very first right enumerated.
Perhaps I'm sensitive to it because it's bound up with "my people". McCarthyism hit "my people" as well, and my grandparents were ostracized for being suspected communists. They were not communists, they were only suspected, and it made their lives hell, it lost them jobs, it gained them FBI files that, one hopes, were closed when they died recently after eighty years of making the world a better place through doing relief work abroad and in the states.
I guess I don't think that "different" should necessarily be "suspicious". And I don't trust the government to use any "discretion" we grant it wisely.
About protests: I'm not sure if they're effective anymore. I think it really depends on how media-savvy the organizers are. Just because there's a protest doesn't mean the media, and thus anyone else, will show up to cover it and give a damn. God knows how many Free Tibet rallies go on in this city that are completely ignored... Tiannemen Square-style debacles, that's effective, but nobody wants effective at that cost.
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Re: I respectfully disagree
Date: 2008-08-27 02:59 am (UTC)You say "It is completely an American concept", and that is, perhaps, the crux. It is an American concept, very much bound up in the early history of the colonies. A lot of my ancestors came over because they were being persecuted for their beliefs. Which isn't to say that there was no persecution once they got here; a lot of Quakers were put to death. William Penn founded Pennsylvania as, essentially, a hippie Quaker commune where anyone could be afforded "freedom of conscience." Because such a large proportion of the colonies were founded by religious dissidents, when it came time to encode the new order in the Constitution, it was the very first right enumerated.
Perhaps I'm sensitive to it because it's bound up with "my people". McCarthyism hit "my people" as well, and my grandparents were ostracized for being suspected communists. They were not communists, they were only suspected, and it made their lives hell, it lost them jobs, it gained them FBI files that, one hopes, were closed when they died recently after eighty years of making the world a better place through doing relief work abroad and in the states.
I guess I don't think that "different" should necessarily be "suspicious". And I don't trust the government to use any "discretion" we grant it wisely.
About protests: I'm not sure if they're effective anymore. I think it really depends on how media-savvy the organizers are. Just because there's a protest doesn't mean the media, and thus anyone else, will show up to cover it and give a damn. God knows how many Free Tibet rallies go on in this city that are completely ignored... Tiannemen Square-style debacles, that's effective, but nobody wants effective at that cost.