Charles20's blog

On April 3rd 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King gave a speech in support of a strike by sanitation workers in Memphis Tennessee. He gave the speech because – during the course of his life as an activist – he had come across a number of reasons to conclude that the struggle for the recognition of his rights was intertwined with a number of other causes related to basic human dignities.

Though we happen to find ourselves on the opposite side of the evolution debate, William Jennings Bryan and I find ourselves in complete agreement on this one point: "destiny is the subterfuge of the invertebrate." Consequently, I become suspicious whenever I hear a politician or political advocacy group invoking the idea of 'destiny' during the course of a debate. Destiny? Really?

Literary criticism is not my strongest point, and I'm trying to improve. Below is a short essay I wrote a few weeks ago on the contrasting views of freedom found in two very different authors. It's not strictly related to the current fights, but it could make a nice jumping off point for beginning a conversation about what balance of freedom and equality we would like to see.

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One of the sticking points in the current debate over the renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillence Act of 1978 is whether or not retroactive immunity should be granted to the telecommunications companies which -- at the request of President Bush -- illegally listened in on the conversations of American citizens without a warrant.