Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. dismantles Secretary of State Colin Powell’s post-9/11 pep talk that called for Americans not to walk around in fear. Pitts argues that the nation has done just that.
Suggested Reading
… So everything that has happened since Powell spoke — the curtailment of civil liberties, the domestic surveillance, the demonizing of all things Muslim — is troubling, but predictable to any student of American history.
In his new book, “Manufacturing Hysteria,” author Jay Feldman traces the depressing line from a German-American being lynched during World War I to the murders of Arabs after 9/11.
Along the way, union leaders, alleged communists, Mexicans, gays, peace activists and African Americans all take their turns in the barrel, all get brutalized, detained, fired, illegally searched or killed outright because they, we are told, are the people we should fear. As a nation, we seem to need that, seem to need a people to fear. But fear interdicts intelligence …
Read Leonard Pitts Jr.’s entire column at the Miami Herald.
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