Shadows of American History.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/08/opinion/08sun3.html
I'm a firm proponent that the form and style of any event matters. The dictator who adopts the forms of democracy while proclaiming liberty and freedom plays a dangerous game; what was supposed to be mere decoration has a way of becoming the actual truth of the matter as well.
This is why the story linked above is disturbing. I'd never heard of anything like this before. Sure, you can intimidate black voters; you can impose poll taxes and literacy tests administered by illiterate people; but you get people elected the old-fashioned way. A curious blindness in noticing the horrible unfairness here, but the point is that you actually have to bother to rig the vote to take power. This is a freakin' coup, 50 years after Bloody Kansas. That's just not supposed to happen in the USA.
If this story is true, there's a gap in American history textbooks.
I'm a firm proponent that the form and style of any event matters. The dictator who adopts the forms of democracy while proclaiming liberty and freedom plays a dangerous game; what was supposed to be mere decoration has a way of becoming the actual truth of the matter as well.
This is why the story linked above is disturbing. I'd never heard of anything like this before. Sure, you can intimidate black voters; you can impose poll taxes and literacy tests administered by illiterate people; but you get people elected the old-fashioned way. A curious blindness in noticing the horrible unfairness here, but the point is that you actually have to bother to rig the vote to take power. This is a freakin' coup, 50 years after Bloody Kansas. That's just not supposed to happen in the USA.
If this story is true, there's a gap in American history textbooks.