| |
 |
Sunday, May 20, 2007 |
Asahi: "Kuzume, a teacher at Seinan Gakuin University here, says she wants the world to take note of the fact that Japan has not been to war for more than 60 years. She also hopes the meaning of Article 9 will take root elsewhere in the world.
Kuzume came up with the idea when she heard about the Article 9 Association founded by Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe in 2004, which calls on people to try to block moves to revise the Constitution, which came into effect May 3, 1947."
Yoshi deserves our support.
12:26:24 PM 
|
|
Al Gore: "A large and growing number of Americans are asking out loud: 'What has happened to our country?' People are trying to figure out what has gone wrong in our democracy, and how we can fix it.
To take another example, for the first time in American history, the Executive Branch of our government has not only condoned but actively promoted the treatment of captives in wartime that clearly involves torture, thus overturning a prohibition established by General George Washington during the Revolutionary War.
It is too easy - and too partisan - to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary. We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have free speech. We have a free press. Have they all failed us? Why has America's public discourse become less focused and clear, less reasoned? Faith in the power of reason - the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power - remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.
American democracy is now in danger - not from any one set of ideas, but from unprecedented changes in the environment within which ideas either live and spread, or wither and die. I do not mean the physical environment; I mean what is called the public sphere, or the marketplace of ideas."
From The Assault on Reason.
10:42:29 AM
|
|
© Copyright 2008.
|
|
|
|
|
