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Title: You don’t protect my freedom: Our childish insistence on calling soldiers heroes deadens real democracy. It's been 70 years since we fought a war about freedom. Forced troop worship and compulsory patriotism must end
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URL Source: http://www.salon.com/2014/11/09/you ... =twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
Published: Nov 9, 2014
Author: David Maciotra
Post Date: 2014-11-09 10:58:44 by christine
Keywords: None
Views: 497
Comments: 20
Put a man in uniform, preferably a white man, give him a gun, and Americans will worship him. It is a particularly childish trait, of a childlike culture, that insists on anointing all active military members and police officers as “heroes.” The rhetorical sloppiness and intellectual shallowness of affixing such a reverent label to everyone in the military or law enforcement betrays a frightening cultural streak of nationalism, chauvinism, authoritarianism and totalitarianism, but it also makes honest and serious conversations necessary for the maintenance and enhancement of a fragile democracy nearly impossible. It has become impossible to go a week without reading a story about police brutality, abuse of power and misuse of authority. Michael Brown’s murder represents the tip of a body pile, and in just the past month, several videos have emerged of police assaulting people, including pregnant women, for reasons justifiable only to the insane. It is equally challenging for anyone reasonable, and not drowning in the syrup of patriotic sentimentality, to stop saluting, and look at the servicemen of the American military with criticism and skepticism. There is a sexual assault epidemic in the military. In 2003, a Department of Defense study found that one-third of women seeking medical care in the VA system reported experiencing rape or sexual violence while in the military. Internal and external studies demonstrate that since the official study, numbers of sexual assaults within the military have only increased, especially with male victims. According to the Pentagon, 38 men are sexually assaulted every single day in the U.S. military. Given that rape and sexual assault are, traditionally, the most underreported crimes, the horrific statistics likely fail to capture the reality of the sexual dungeon that has become the United States military. Chelsea Manning, now serving time in prison as a whistle-blower, uncovered multiple incidents of fellow soldiers laughing as they murdered civilians. Keith Gentry, a former Navy man, wrote that when he and his division were bored they preferred passing the time with the “entertainment” of YouTube videos capturing air raids of Iraq and Afghanistan, often making jokes and mocking the victims of American violence. If the murder of civilians, the rape of “brothers and sisters” on base, and the relegation of death and torture of strangers as fodder for amusement qualifies as heroism, the world needs better villains. It is undeniable that there are police officers who heroically uphold their motto and mission to “serve and protect,” just as it is indisputable that there are members of the military who valiantly sacrifice themselves for the sake of others. Reviewing the research proving cruelty and mendacity within law enforcement and the military, and reading the stories of trauma and tragedy caused by officers and soldiers, does not mean that no cop or troop qualifies as a hero, but it certainly means that many of them are not heroes. Acknowledging the spread of sadism across the ranks of military also does not mean that the U.S. government should neglect veterans, as they often do, by cutting their healthcare options, delaying or denying treatment, and reducing psychiatric services. On the contrary, if American politicians and pundits genuinely believed that American military members are “heroes,” they would not settle for sloganeering, and garish tributes. They would insist that veterans receive the best healthcare possible. Improving and universalizing high quality healthcare for all Americans, including veterans, is a much better and truer way to honor the risks soldiers and Marines accept on orders than unofficially imposing a juvenile and dictatorial rule over speech in which anything less than absolute and awed adulation for all things military is treasonous. One of the reasons that the American public so eagerly and excitedly complies with the cultural code of lionizing every soldier and cop is because of the physical risk-taking and bravery many of them display on the foreign battleground and the American street. Physical strength and courage is only useful and laudable when invested in a cause that is noble and moral. The causes of American foreign policy, especially at the present, rarely qualify for either compliment. The “troops are heroes” boosters of American life typically toss out clichés to defend their generalization – “They defend our freedom,” “They fight so we don’t have to.” No American freedom is currently at stake in Afghanistan. It is impossible to imagine an argument to the contrary, just as the war in Iraq was clearly fought for the interests of empire, the profits of defense contractors, and the edification of neoconservative theorists. It had nothing to do with the safety or freedom of the American people. The last time the U.S. military deployed to fight for the protection of American life was in World War II – an inconvenient fact that reduces clichés about “thanking a soldier” for free speech to rubble. If a soldier deserves gratitude, so does the litigator who argued key First Amendment cases in court, the legislators who voted for the protection of free speech, and thousands of external agitators who rallied for more speech rights, less censorship and broader access to media. Wars that are not heroic have no real heroes, except for the people who oppose those wars. Far from being the heroes of recent wars, American troops are among their victims. No rational person can blame the soldier, the Marine, the airman, or the Navy man for the stupid and destructive foreign policy of the U.S. government, but calling them “heroes,” and settling for nothing less, makes honest and critical conversations about American foreign policy less likely to happen. If all troops are heroes, it doesn’t make much sense to call their mission unnecessary and unjust. It also makes conversations about the sexual assault epidemic, or the killing of innocent civilians, impossible. If all troops are heroes, it doesn’t make any sense to acknowledge that some are rapists and sadists. The same principle of clear-eyed scrutiny applies to law enforcement agencies. Police departments everywhere need extensive investigation of their training methods, qualifications for getting on the job, and psychological evaluation. None of that will happen as long as the culture calls cops heroes, regardless of their behavior. An understandable reason for calling all troops heroes, even on the left, is to honor the sacrifice they make after they die or endure a life-altering injury in one of America’s foolish acts of aggression. A more helpful and productive act of citizenship, and sign of solidarity with the military, is the enlistment in an antiwar movement that would prevent the government from using its volunteer Army as a plaything for the financial advancement and political cover of the state-corporate nexus and the military-industrial complex of Dwight Eishenhower’s nightmares. Given the dubious and dangerous nature of American foreign policy, and the neglect and abuse veterans often suffer when returning home wounded or traumatized, Americans, especially those who oppose war, should do everything they can to discourage young, poor and working-class men and women from joining the military. Part of the campaign against enlistment requires removing the glory of the “hero” label from those who do enlist. Stanley Hauerwas, a professor of divinity studies at Duke whom Time called “America’s best theologian,” has suggested that, given the radical pacifism of Jesus Christ, American churches should do all they can to discourage its young congregants from joining the military. Haurwas’ brand of intellectual courage is necessary, even among non-Christians, to combat the hysterical sycophancy toward the military in a culture where even saluting a Marine, while holding a coffee cup, is tantamount to terrorism. The men and women who do enlist deserve better than to die in the dirt and come home in a bag, or spend their lives in wheelchairs, and their parents should not have to drown in tears and suffer the heartbreak of burying their children. The catastrophes become less common when fewer people join the military. Calling all cops and troops heroes insults those who actually are heroic – the soldier who runs into the line of fire to protect his division, the police officer who works tirelessly to find a missing child – by placing them alongside the cops who shoot unarmed teenagers who have their hands in the air, or the soldier who rapes his subordinate. It also degrades the collective understanding of heroism to the fantasies of high-budget, cheap-story action movies. The American conception of heroism seems inextricably linked to violence; not yet graduated from third-grade games of cops and robbers. Explosions and smoking guns might make for entertaining television, but they are not necessary, and more and more in modern society, not even helpful in determining what makes a hero. A social worker who commits to the care and advocacy of adults with developmental disabilities – helping them find employment, group home placement and medical care, and just treating them with love and kindness – is a hero. A hospice worker in a poor neighborhood, providing precious comfort and consolation to someone dying on the ugly edges of American healthcare, is a hero. An inner-city teacher, working hard to give essential education and meaningful affirmation to children living in neighborhoods where bullets fly and families fall apart, is a hero. Not all teachers, hospice workers or social workers are heroes, but emphasizing the heroism of those who do commit to their clients, patients and students with love and service would cause a shift of America’s fundamental values. It would place the spotlight on tender and selfless acts of solidarity and empathy for the poor. Calling all cops heroes too often leads to pathetic deference to authority, even when the results are fatal, and insisting all members of the military are heroes too often reinforces the American values of militarism and exceptionalism. The assignment of heroism, exactly like the literary construct, might have more to do with the assignment of villainy than the actual honoring of “heroes.” Every hero needs a villain. If the only heroes are armed men fighting the country’s wars on drugs and wars in the Middle East, America’s only villains are criminals and terrorists. If servants of the poor, sick and oppressed are the heroes, then the villains are those who oppress, profit from inequality and poverty, and neglect the sick. If that is the real battle of heroism versus villainy, everyone is implicated, and everyone has a far greater role than repeating slogans, tying ribbons and placing stickers on bumpers. Poster Comment: Outstanding commentary!
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#1. To: christine (#0)
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken
I stopped reading right there. Seems like every opinion piece that calls out the police and military throws in that hoodrat in an attempt to garner sympathy for that little (well, not so little) street thug. This must be the fifteenth article I've seen posted here at freedom4um that mentions him along with police violence!! Why?? Why do they do it??? What the hell is it about Michael Brown that has every two-bit blogger swooning with angst and hand-wringing???? We Are Not Michael Brown, no matter how many articles are written otherwise!!!
#2. To: christine (#0)
Michael Brown’s murder represents the tip of a body pile,
-Alex Kurtagic
#3. To: X-15 (#2)
Good points - I identify much more w/Taylor than w/Brown.
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken
#4. To: X-15 (#2)
Bump to you #2, X....
#5. To: X-15 (#2)
Beat me. A rabid dog is harmful to the citizens. Just for fun. one has to wonder just who it was that VOTED IN THESE ESTEEMED MEMBERS OF OUR GOVERNMENT? Was it those horrible military people, all by themselves? Or just perhaps it was those styay at home, let someone else do it loyal Americans. This blatant adoration of military, cops etc etc is JUST MORE BRAIN WASHING BY THE BASTARDS THAT SOMEONE OUT THERE THAT PUT THEM IN OFFICE. This rabid dog writer is first in line to do his civic by paying his taxes, that pay those horrible military and police people. I stopped reading right there.
#6. To: X-15 (#2) (Edited)
#7. To: X-15, 4um (#2)
Published November 09, 2014 FoxNews.com Facebook30 Twitter57 livefyre2 Email Print A Korean War POW has been laid to rest near his mother's grave in California with full military honors more than 60 years after he died of untreated wounds in enemy hands. Army Sgt. Lee Henderson Manning’s burial was held Friday at the Inglewood Park Cemetery near Los Angeles, bringing relief to his sister and other relatives. “It really warms my heart and I know I can keep this in my memory bank forever,” Carrie Elam told KTLA-TV after her brother’s graveside memorial service. Manning was just 20 years old when he enlisted in 1950 and trained as a medic. He had hoped to become a doctor. Returning prisoners of war reported Manning was captured by Chinese forces while rendering aid to members of the 9th Infantry Regiment during a December 1950 battle. He died six months later from medical neglect and was buried in a mass grave. The government notified the family this summer that DNA testing confirmed the identity of remains provided by North Korea. During the service, a South Korean government official presented his country’s Ambassador for Peace Medal to Manning’s family. Elam told KTLA she wondered if her brother’s remains would ever be found. “Who would have ever thought that they’d find my brother after 60 years? So, if you have faith, it can happen,” she said. More than 7,000 Americans are still unaccounted for from the Korean War
#8. To: Cynicom (#7)
Most interesting - thank you. I wonder how the graveyard was discovered (construction project?) and why they decided to do DNA-testing. I guess that it was done on all the remains...but how did they have the information to get a match for Sgt.Manning? Just wondering...
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken
#9. To: Lod (#8)
Dog tags would do it. but how did they have the information to get a match for Sgt.Manning?
#10. To: All, From the same author (#4)
Author and critic Albert Murray claimed that the “melodramatic hero” confronts the blues with the faith that “there is a magic key to success.” “We shall overcome”, the melodramatic hero sings—sometimes in defeat, and sometimes in triumph—but always providing a service that “without which no individual or community can remain free.” When the appraisers of history and the rescuers of memory settle the score of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century, they could and should apply the title of melodramatic hero to Jesse Jackson. The mere mention of his name causes convulsions among the American right wing, but the only possible conclusion to gather after reviewing the work of Jackson—especially his Presidential campaigns of 1984 and 1988—is that without his heroism, a different America would exist—one that is decidedly less free and fair. When I sat down in the surprisingly humble offices of Jesse Jackson’s Chicago headquarters of Rainbow/PUSH, my conversation with the Reverend eventually turned toward the foaming at the mouth hostility he provokes in his conservative critics: “In my most quiet moments, I think our impact was traumatizing for them,” Jackson said. “Many of them thought when they finally got rid of King in ’68, and we floundered because we were so disoriented, that they were through with us on the national level.” Fear is irrational, but powerful, and many conservative whites likely feared the changes Jackson was instrumental in making, and the changes he continues to represent. One can see the same trauma at work in the derangement many people have descended into since the election of Barack Obama to the White House. Before there was a President Obama, the first serious, national black candidate for the presidency was Jesse Jackson. In the years leading up to Jackson’s campaign, black politicians had made significant gains at the mayoral and congressional levels, but there was little national presence. The impact Jackson made, in that regard, was like that which Muhammad Ali would make on a cheap, screen door with his fists. First, there is the indisputable fact that without Jackson’s campaigns, there is no President Obama, and not just because of the inspirational power and instructional example of a black man winning primaries and caucuses in the 1980s. “We democratized democracy,” Jackson said when explaining that in his 1984 campaign, he got 21 percent of the popular vote, but only eight percent of the delegates. The Democratic nomination process had a “winner take all” rule system of awarding every state delegate to the winner of that state, no matter how small the margin of victory. Considering that Hillary Clinton won Texas, California, New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania in 2008, had the winner take all distribution still existed, she would have gotten the nomination. Due to the disparity in popular vote and delegation, Jackson lobbied hard, internally within the Democratic Party, for proportionality. He got it, and in 1988, he won 13 states, and had 1300 delegates, taking on the role of frontrunner after his win in Michigan and coming close to securing the nomination. He poured the foundation for the concrete road Obama would ride to victory twenty years later. The presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson also laid the groundwork for the diversification of the Democratic Party, and, because of his unparalleled success in voter registration, during the height of the Reagan reign, the survival of the Democratic Party. Most historians and journalists credit Jackson’s energizing and mobilizing of black, Latino, young, and progressive voters with the Democrats holding control of Congress in 1986. Out of the Jackson campaign emerged a new lineup of leadership from black America. Douglas Wilder became the first African American governor of any state since Reconstruction in Virginia in 1990. David Dinkins, in 1989, became the first black mayor of New York City. Norm Rice became the first black mayor of Seattle. Willie Herenton became the first black mayor of Memphis, and Wellington Webb became the first black mayor of Denver. There were also progressive white Senators who won in Florida, California, Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina—all with less than forty percent of the white vote. “I don’t belabor it with bitterness,” Jackson said when I asked about the Democratic Party’s lack of gratitude for his voter registration. “But what is objectively clear, it was one of Dr. King’s pet peeves that there were so many unregistered black voters. So, we brought on that new black vote in America, and it led to the regaining of the Senate, and laid the groundwork for Clinton in ’92. We fundamentally changed the registration population, but more importantly, the activist population.” Jesse Jackson decided to run for President in 1984, not by vanity or even choice, but almost by the shove from the hand of fate he felt on his back. It all began with the failure of the Democratic Party to support the very kinds of candidates, and represent the constituencies he committed to identifying, amplifying, and ushering into the highest levels of policymaking institutions. In 1983, Jackson worked as an organizer for Harold Washington’s campaign to become the first black mayor of Chicago. It was a tight, three-way Democratic primary between Washington, Richard Daley, and Jane Byrne. A rumor began to circulate that Ted Kennedy and Walter Mondale were going to visit Chicago to endorse Daley and Byrne, respectively. “I thought there is no way they are going to get involved in a mayoral primary,” Jackson recalled, “Especially knowing how invested black voters and organizers are in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.” When Kennedy and Mondale did arrive, Jackson said, “If this is what liberal number one and liberal number two will do, we need to go in a new direction. Someone needs to run in the Presidential primary to challenge the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which had become morally bankrupt and began taking black voters for granted.” He first suggested it to Maynard Jackson, who was the first African American mayor of Atlanta, and he declined. Andrew Young, Jackson’s successor in Atlanta and President Carter’s ambassador to the United Nations, was Jesse Jackson’s second call, but he also refused. “So, we went on a Southern voter registration tour, and by this time the dialogue we were having about a black challenger in the Presidential primary had gone public,” Jackson said, “And everywhere I went, all I heard was ‘run, Jesse, run.’” The presidential campaigns of Jackson became the leading left-liberal resistance to the viciousness of Reagan Republicanism. As Reagan injected the toxicity of racial division into the American body politic, Jackson spoke about “coming up together”. When Reagan acted as if liberals were alien invaders of harmonic America, Jackson reminded the nation of its debt to the dreams of liberal leaders, Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King. And while Reagan refused to acknowledge the existence of gay men suffering with AIDS, the Jackson campaign made several stops to sleep in AIDS hospices. The Jackson campaign became the resurrection of the black freedom movement in national politics. When giving his eulogy for Rosa Parks in 2005, Jackson said that when American politicians promote democracy abroad, they are not referring to the chattel slavery and gender apartheid of “Jeffersonian Democracy,” they are talking about “Parks-King democracy.” The black freedom movement has always acted as a civilizing force in American life, and it is has embodied the best of progressive political agitation. Drawing on the relationship between King and Jackson, Michael Eric Dyson writes that the Jackson run for president, like King’s jeremiad to America, brought together the “goals of economic empowerment, racial harmony, and universal justice”, in a vision of the “Afro-American religious perspective.” “Dr. King used to tell me,” Jackson said, “‘our religion makes us political, our politics don’t make us religious.’” Much of the electricity of the Jackson campaign came from the surge of his moral language. Almost a new dialect in electoral politics, Jackson spoke in a politicized terminology of theology—what Marshall Frady in his biography of Jackson called “gospel populism.” When I asked Jackson about the connection between his faith and his work, he reverted right back to the prophetic tongue of political apostleship. “My work is a faith journey,” he said. “My passion is to expand the tent—make room for the rich, young ruler, and the man on the Jericho road. Many Americans have made Jesus into an American religious trophy. I’m into the Galilean Jesus, not the post-Constantine Jesus. I’m into the Jesus that was an ethnic minority, a subject of the Roman Occupation, a refugee to Egypt escaping genocide, a preacher to the poor, and someone who never stopped challenging the oppressive schemes of the ruling class. Jesus spent more time on policy than piety.” Even Jackson’s critics will concede that he is one of the great orators of American history. His convention speeches in 1984 and ’88 are still among the most amazing speeches of recent political history. It is his ability to merge moral sentiment, theological passion, and policy prescription that lights the fire of his rhetoric. “I remember calling Dr. Samuel Proctor, who was my college President when I was at North Carolina A&T, the day before the first debate in ’84, and I said, ‘I am very nervous to debate Mondale, John Glenn, and others. I don’t have the experience speaking this political language that they do’,” Jackson said. “Dr. Proctor told me, ‘Look, when they get into all the academic talk, take the moral high ground and always stay there.’” “Slavery was immoral before it was illegal. Segregation was immoral before it was illegal,” Jackson added when thinking about the importance of morality in politics. The relationship between law and ethics, from Selma to Ferguson, is tenuous, and often contentious. Leadership is the work of helping people think beyond the legal, and into the brighter and better world of the possible. Moral language enlarges the political imagination, but it has no edification if it is not rooted in reality, and does not function as the eloquent articulation of action. Barack Obama, in 2008, often spoke in the ambitious language of the moral tribune, but he lacked a certain specificity Jackson always possessed, even to his own detriment. “We had a platform on which we could project the social justice agenda,” Jackson said. The Jackson agenda of ’84 and ’88 included many positions that, at the time, were “extreme” or “radical”, but have since become mainstream: Universal health care, acceptance of gays and lesbians, an urban policy to combat “drugs in, guns in, jobs out”, an end to a “no talk policy” in the Middle East and working toward a two state solution, taking Nelson Mandela off the CIA terrorist list, raising the minimum wage, lowering the Pentagon budget, appointing women to more positions in the federal government, and addressing the crisis of dysfunction in poor, public schools. The wide range of Jackson’s clarion call brought together former enemies in American life. Jackson recalled meeting a group of white supporters in Alabama who said, “We were with you in Selma.” After Jackson thanked them, they said, “You don’t understand, we were on the other side.” White family farmers facing foreclosure became a key constituency of Jackson’s. At one rally in Mississippi, a large group of them showed up, Jackson remembers, with “sacks on their heads.” “We thought we had been set up for something bad,” he said. It turned out they were hiding their faces from the Farmer’s Bureau. “It made me think of poor, inner city blacks who didn’t register to vote, because they didn’t want the government to have their name. Hiding from the oppressor was one, of many things, they had in common,” Jackson explained. “The poor, white, rural farmer facing foreclosure, called himself conservative. The poor, black displaced worker, feeling rejected, called himself liberal. They were in the same situation, but they never met.” “Economic common ground” became a refrain of the Jackson campaign, long before the “99 percent” became part of the public vernacular. “We said, ‘if we could leave the racial battleground for economic common ground, we can find the moral higher ground.’ That’s how we got the rhythm.” Jackson’s campaigns had next to no funding, which is why he dubbed them “Poor campaign, rich message.” He was able to take that rhythm, however, from neighborhood to neighborhood—barnstorming the country with the direct, to-the-people connection. “A crusade is more powerful than a campaign. A crusade is based on the spirit of the people, and the will of volunteers. I slept in people’s homes, ate in church basements and high school cafeterias.” Many of the people were those who were once excluded from mainstream politics. “There were often more people protesting outside the conventions than delegates inside,” Jackson said, referring to black activists, Native Americans, gay rights groups, and student groups. “My strategy was to bring in the people we never had, not try to recapture the people we lost to Reagan.” When I asked Jesse Jackson about his legacy and the legacy of those campaigns, he reiterated his influence over the delegation system and its essentiality to the Obama victory, and he talked, again, about the results of his voter registration. He then abruptly left the room. The last decade has not been kind to Jesse Jackson, and it has given encouragement to critics who would prefer to delete his sizable accomplishments from the historical record. By demonstrating a willingness to criticize President Obama, often rebuking him for his cozy relationship with Wall Street. and even in our conversation tempering his compliments of Obamacare with the statement, “we still have one party with two names”, he has created space for Al Sharpton—a dubious man without half the resume of Jackson—to eclipse him on the national stage. Sharpton, who once confessed he will never criticize the president, in his transparent fawning for access, has gotten it. While Jackson, especially after the infamous hot mic moment in which he vulgarly attacked Obama, has, in Chicago and elsewhere, gone back to organizing the outsiders he served so well in the 1960s and ‘80s. Jackson’s son—Jesse Jr.—who had a strong record as a legislator in Congress, and showed promise as a future Senator or Mayor of Chicago—resigned with bipolar disorder, and is now serving a term in prison for using campaign funds to make personal purchases. Jackson himself was caught in scandal two years ago when a former mistress made allegations about missing child support payments for the child they conceived during their affair. But judging a man by the measure of his mistakes—as our culture is often given to do—is a luxury no person can afford, because the microscope is equally cruel and unforgiving to everyone. “I’m still trying to serve”, Jackson told me. The same morning I conducted my interview, his staff was buzzing around trying to hammer out the details of a trip to Disney World that Jackson and the Rainbow/PUSH organization have arranged for the returning Little League World Series Champions of the Jackie Robinson West team on the Southside of Chicago. A few minutes after Jesse Jackson moved his imposingly tall and broad frame out the room, he returned and interrupted a conversation I was having with a member of his staff to continue his answer to my question about his legacy, as if there was not a second of space in between his sentences. “I remember sitting with Barack in 2008, and he told me that when he watched the Democratic primary debate in ’84, he thought, ‘it can happen.’” Leaning forward in his chair, Jackson continued, “Leadership is about reviving the spirit. Leadership rebuilds the infrastructure of people’s minds, because leadership comes in when people cease to believe.” In 1984, it wasn’t merely a presidential campaign that Jesse Jackson launched; it was a revival tent tour. If America is a place where “it can happen”—the “it” being the expansion of freedom, the creation of conditions for equality, and the elevation of justice—then after the murders of King and the Kennedys, the horror of Vietnam, the disgrace of Nixon’s resignation, and the shallow and divisive message of Reagan, Jackson not only revived the social justice agenda of the Democratic Party and the black freedom movement at the national level, he revived the American spirit. David Masciotra is a columnist with the Indianapolis Star, and the author of Mellencamp: American Troubadour (forthcoming, University Press of Kentucky) 
The Unsung Heroism of Jesse Jackson
#11. To: Pinguinite (#9)
What sort of DNA information did dog tags have sixty years ago? Blood-type wouldn't make this sort of ID possible, would it? It's a nice story, but I find it suspect.
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken
#12. To: Jethro Tull (#10)
Uhhh... The civil rights leader has had a rough decade, but his campaigns for president paved the way for Barack Obama and brought about a better, more inclusive America.
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken
#13. To: christine (#0)
And traitors like Bo Bergdahl, Obama's protege and fellow Muslim (or so it seems). If all troops are heroes, it doesn’t make any sense to acknowledge that some are rapists and sadists.
Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends. Paul Craig Roberts
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." Frederic Bastiat
#14. To: X-15 (#2)
Daz Rat!!! We Are Not Michael Brown, no matter how many articles are written otherwise!!!
Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends. Paul Craig Roberts
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." Frederic Bastiat
#15. To: Lod (#8)
Oddly enough we have Americans in North Korea working with them in active search for bodies. This has been going on for years. I have one friend that was declared KIA only two years ago. Shot down over North Korea but nothing ever found. I wonder how the graveyard was discovered (construction project?)
#16. To: Jethro Tull (#10)
O--M--G
To question is to value the ideal of truth more highly than the loyalties to nation, religion, race, or ideology.
#17. To: Cynicom (#15)
Another puzzling thing to me. The grave was then in N.Korea, but S.Korea does the return and the honor? Geo-politics, I guess. Whatever the truth, I'm glad that Manning's family is comforted. Oddly enough we have Americans in North Korea working with them in active search for bodies. This has been going on for years.
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken
#18. To: Lod (#17)
There have been many bodies returned from North Korea. Mostly from aircraft shot down, leaving a marker or memory of such by people on the ground. Valleys of Death book, gives it all proper perspective. All the hype for and against war and military is washed away. Kill or be killed, one mans effort to survive.
#19. To: Cynicom (#18)
Mostly from aircraft shot down, leaving a marker or memory of such by people on the ground. Valleys of Death book, gives it all proper perspective. All the hype for and against war and military is washed away. Kill or be killed, one mans effort to survive. Thanks for this information. There have been many bodies returned from North Korea.
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken
#20. To: Lod (#11)
I meant that if the body was found with dog tags, then the tags would have given them a preliminary ID, from which a DNA test could confirm identity. What sort of DNA information did dog tags have sixty years ago? Blood-type wouldn't make this sort of ID possible, would it?
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