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• Tuesday, August 5, 2008 10:28 AM

  A Culture of Authoritarianism

  Glenn Greenwald, 2008:

  Given everything that has happened over the last seven years -- not just with the anthrax attacks but with countless episodes of Government deceit and corruption -- it's astonishing (and more than a little disturbing) how many people are willing, even eager, to assume that the Government's accusations against Ivins are accurate even without seeing a shred of evidence to support those claims.

  Scientific American, June 1958 (via June 2008 issue)

  PASSIVE NATION--"Poll after poll among our youngsters has given statistical confirmation of the phenomenon of American life which David Riesman, in his book The Lonely Crowd, named 'other-direction'--extreme sensitivity to the opinions of others, with a concomitant conformity. As a nation we seem to have a syndrome characterized by atrophy of the will, hypertrophy of the ego and dystrophy of the intellectual musculature. This rather unpleasant portrait is an inescapable conclusion from the mass of data on the attitudes of the younger generation. More than half believe that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the local police should be allowed to use wiretapping at will, that the police should be permitted to use the 'third degree,' that people who refuse to testify against themselves should be forced to do so."

  Our slide towards authoritarianism has old roots. The chickens have come home to roost.

  —ramoncreager Read ramoncreager's other letters
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