That was incredibly engaging and enjoyable reading (with the one problem of reading the poorly scanned document). Anyway, the link is here. First comment, in reading the introduction, I could not agree more with the following paragraph:
“On the other hand, we could measure our democracy against an ideal (even if admittedly unachievable) standard. I would argue for such an approach, because, in what may seem to some a paradox, the ideal standard is the pragmatic one; it affects what we do. To grade a student on the basis of an improvement over past performance is justifiable if the intention is to encourage someone discouraged about his ability. But if he is rather pompous about his superiority in relation to other students (and I suggest this is frequently true of Americans evaluating American ‘democracy’), and if in addition he is a medical student about to graduate into a world ridden with disease, it would be best to judge him by an ideal standard. That might spur him to an improvement fast enough to save lives.”
That said, I generally agreed with the main idea of the passage (that America is not democratic compared against the ideal (and correct) standard). There were a few points that I would bicker on, but that’s for another time.
Lastly, I found the talk of civil disobedience at the end incredibly thought-provoking. When I saw it in the original list of 10 items, I was rather confused and thought it was a bad idea, but I’m increasingly liking it. Frankly, one start would be to explicitly state that nullification is an option to all juries (as it should be; it is an acceptable form of civil disobedience). I liken this “right” to civil disobedience to the “right” to bear arms. The parallel seems very strong to me, and proper. Note: As of now, I’d say that I support both (provided that the civil disobedience one is phrased properly).
NB: This reading is only 8 pages (as compared to the last one which is 17, and the next one which has no link and is 38 pages), so if you haven’t read the essay by Zinn, I’d suggest checking the link out.
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