Word: acte
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...does not have to be this way. One act of good faith could transform this situation like the stroke of a sword. One decent act on the order of "the fourth alternative is to remove you by force. And none of us is prepared even to consider this"--one decent act would move all but the most hardened ideologue to reconsider his attitudes. But in the same way, further acts of distrust and rigidity, no matter what principles they embody will only serve to move the most open minded of students into the camp of the ideologues...
...does not have to be this way. An administration that will accept at least part of the responsibility for what happened Tuesday, that will act humanely toward its dissenters, that in the future will talk to them with arguments rather than with ultimatums, will find students who are willing to forego their own self-rightcousness, their own ultimatums...
...book, is fine. But what is troubling is a question that Zinn raises in the first chapter, but never answers. Left unanswered, it seems to haunt and make slightly unreal all of the emotional energy of Zinn's attack on the Court and American society. If we justify one act of civil disobedience, he asks...
Must we not justify them all? If a student has a right to break the conscription law, does this not give the Klan the right to disobey the Civil Rights Act? There is a confusion here between the tolerance of all speech, and the tolerance of all actions. I would argue that all promulgation of ideas by speech or press whether odious to us or not, should be tolerated without distinction; that we, as citizens, should defend someone's right to speak stupidly (even while we expose that studidity), that whatever "harm" may come from bad ideas...
...book's thesis, insofar as it relates to this question, is not only that the individual citizen has a duty to act on moral grounds, even if his action is illegal, but that the Court must respect this duty and uphold it. The Court, Zinn says, must "stand for the law sometimes, for justice always." This is an exciting, romantic, beautiful idea: that we might order our society on morality and so live together in peace. But Zinn has not carried his theory to its logical end. If he wants the Court to recognize his right to oppose laws...