Denying the Antecedent.) An inductive fallacy is simply an argument where the premises are not strong enough to support the conclusion. Even if they are true, you can't reach that conclusion from here Jun 11, · But consider an opposing view. By leaking the secret study, Mr. Ellsberg was engaged in nothing less than an assault on democracy itself. The way in which we control critical national security {blogger.comtSummary(blogger.comtTextFromField(blogger.comg))}
Log in | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
It is an axiom that governmental secrecy is antithetical to democratic self-rule. But it is also an axiom that secrecy is crucial to the conduct of statecraft.
The 50th anniversary of the publication of the Pentagon Papers by The New York Times provides an occasion to consider what happens when the two axioms collide. The case of Daniel Ellsberg, perhaps the most celebrated leaker in our history, reveals the ambiguities stemming from a tension that can never be satisfactorily resolved. Beginning inworking in the inner sanctum of the Pentagon with Vietnam as his portfolio, Mr. Ellsberg acquired as full a picture of the war as anyone in the U.
Inafter a stint in Vietnam itself, he joined the RAND Corporation, where he gained access to a remarkable top-secret Pentagon study to which he had contributed. By this juncture, Mr. Ellsberg was far along in his conversion from true-believing Pentagon war planner to avid antiwar radical.
Operating in secretessays on democracy, he painstakingly photocopied the 47 volumes of the study and showed it all to The Timeswhich began publishing sections of it on June 13,exactly 50 years ago on Sunday.
Were Mr. Today, they are widely regarded as such. After all, facing a potential life sentence for violating the Espionage Act, he took it upon himself to inform the public about a vital matter: namely, that the study showed, as he saw it, essays on democracy, that the American government had been lying for years about essays on democracy progress of the war.
But consider an opposing view. By leaking the secret study, Mr. Ellsberg was engaged in nothing less than an assault on democracy itself. The way in which we control critical national security secrets has been established by Congress and the executive branch, two bodies that are both accountable to the public and checked and balanced by the courts.
Disregarding his secrecy oaths and violating the law, Mr. Ellsberg, accountable to no one, took it upon himself to attempt to steer the ship of state. It can be argued, perhaps, that even if Mr. Ellsberg broke the law and acted outside the channels of democratic decision-making, he was somehow still representing the will of the American people. After all, essays on democracy, by the spring ofa strong majority of Americans wanted troops out of Vietnam by the end of the year.
But essays on democracy then, after tens of thousands of Americans had died, the public did not favor the kind of precipitous withdrawal that Mr.
Ellsberg and his compatriots in the antiwar movement were calling for, if it meant American prisoners of war would not return safely home. Indeed, even by the election, with the Pentagon Papers already in the public domain for all to read, the candidate favoring immediate withdrawal from Vietnam, George McGovern, was trounced in one of the most sweeping landslides in American history.
In short, far from operating within the norms of our democracy, Mr. Ellsberg was illegally exploiting his privileged access to secret information to advance the views of a small but highly vocal minority. But the actual contents of the Pentagon Papers were something else.
Far from shaking public opinion, and disappointingly to Essays on democracy. Ellsberg, the revelations were met with a collective yawn, essays on democracy.
For one thing, they were stale. Not a single document in the collection was less than three years old. The Pentagon history was the record of the Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower and Truman years, essays on democracy. For another thing, essays on democracy, despite the wealth of material, the overall thrust of the Pentagon Papers was already familiar to the public. The American people already knew from the press that the war was going badly under Kennedy and Johnson even as both administrations, as they led the nation deeper into the conflict, had depicted it as going well.
The public soon distrusted Nixon, too. The Ellsberg revelations merely filled in more details in a picture that was already well established. Ellsberg had released, essays on democracy. If the Pentagon Papers leak harmed national security, it was simply by demonstrating to the world that the United States was having trouble keeping its secrets. To Mr. In this respect Mr.
Ellsberg stands in sharply favorable contrast to the mega-leakers of the current day, like Edward Snowden, who in before fleeing to Moscow, disclosed thousands if not hundreds of thousands of electronic pages, not about historical events but ongoing secret governmental activities. Even if Mr. Snowden exposed what were arguably unconstitutional surveillance programs begun by the Bush administration, his flight from accountability and his indiscriminate dumping into the public essays on democracy of numerous other highly essays on democracy intelligence and counterterrorism operations, none specifically in violation of any statute, makes him someone who should be tried, convicted, and jailed under the espionage statutes.
Given essays on democracy the leaking of national-security secrets is a venture fraught with moral uncertainty, Mr. One can admire the single-minded tenacity with which he pursued his aim of ending the Vietnam War. And one can take note of the fact that he neither directly endangered national security nor accomplished at least in the short term his main objective of turning public opinion against the war.
But he was still a rogue actor, who if the fundamental ground rules of our constitutional democracy are to be respected, deserves a measure of condemnation along with the celebration that he has already earned.
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The Democracy of the Constitution, and other Addresses and Essays by Henry Cabot LODGE Part 2/2
, time: 56:58EMERSON - ESSAYS - SELF-RELIANCE
An essay is a "short formal piece of blogger.comg with a single subject" ("Essay," ).It is typically written to try to persuade the reader using selected research evidence ("Essay," ).In general, an academic essay has three parts. An introduction that gives the reader an idea of what they are about to learn and presents an argument in the form of a thesis statement The paper assumes that democracy is the best form of governance for Ghana. SEPARATION OF POWERS Key differences among the three systems (presidential, parliamentary and hybrid) include the extent to which the powers of government are separated functionally between branches, and in the powers one branch does or does not have over another Essays Democracy Essay for Students and Children. + Words Essay on Democracy. Democracy is known as the finest form of government. Why so? Because in a democracy, the people of the country choose their government. They enjoy certain rights which are very essential for any human being to live freely and happily
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