Word: dissent
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...Dissent and Power...
Intellectuals should learn to master the art of dissent within government, a problem that has greatly changed since the days of Thomas More and Machiavelli. James C. Thomson Jr., a former East Asia specialist at the State Department and White House, writes that in the internal Government debate over Viet Nam, "doubters and dissenters were effectively neutralized by a subtle dynamic: the domestication of dissenters." As soon as former Under Secretary of State George Ball began to express doubts, he was "warmly institutionalized." At each stage of the war's escalation, he was invited to express his dissent. Concludes...
...indulgent of willful minority actions, which are still destructive even if idealistically provoked by a dreadful war. At this late date, one need not be an alarmist to wonder how long the free university in this country can survive the extra ordinary conjuncture of such extremes of tolerance and dissent...
...emphasis on the dozens of innocent people who are seriously inconvenienced by the practice, the court made it clear that it hoped the police would find another way of sifting out suspects. Whether the police will do so, however, is uncertain. As Justice Potter Stewart pointed out in dissent, even if a suspect's prints were obtained improperly, the police might be able to rearrest him properly later and take his fingerprints then. That being so, it may be some time before police are willing to abandon as handy a device as the dragnet...
Most of these arguments-from-practicality could easily be mistaken for old-style conservatism. In April, most of them were. The one application of Calkins' theory that came as a surprise to most students was his "elegant dissent" scheme...