Pfc. Bradley Manning offers guilty plea in Wikileaks case

[freshwest]

58. I hope he didn't crave adulation; I feel he was caught up. I remember when all of these great

Disclosures were dumped on the web. By people who profited by getting donations for the cause. The noble cause being transparency at any cost, like Issa dumping the names of Libyans for poliitcal purpose.

As much as I was inspired and felt a sense of liberation from Wikileaks, the governments they toppled in some places, were not replaced by democratic ones, but by more authoritarian ones. This has been a source of disllusionment of some of the Arab spring protestors. I feel many of us have been decieved about how to gain power to change these institutions, thinking a few days, weeks in the streets will do it, without electoral victories or hands on work with people.

Certainly, those who call for not voting as making one part of the evil government, can point to individual helping. If they fail to get involved with elections which is what does change government, they have missed the mark. I have friends of different religions who do soup lines and gathering up things for the poor. It is part of their religion, but I urge them to continue to support the tenet of the New Deal which enriched their own lives, by voting and supporting those who do.

I kindly remind my friends, that refusing to vote or get involved politically to change the bigger picture, for those people they will never meet, might never tolerate helping, is passing the buck. It is feel good giving, although often it is hard on the personal level, and for that I thank them. What is harder, though, is to make the government do these things and elminate the problem en masse.

That is the role of the government, but some want it reduced to nothing because they only see the bad that government does, which is exactly the Koch family position in the long run. As if the private sector and business will, take care of it. That is not intellectually honest, since it is not the purpose of a corporation or private interest. As far as philantrophy by the ultra wealthy or others, that is a shiny object dangled in front of people as a magical solution that costs them nothing:

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

The anti-government crowd want a libertarian paradise, with only charity and church helping out the poor. So the rich continue to not be taxed, so that it is voluntary and they consider themselves if not of that number now, soon to be. That is the end result of their philosophy. For the success of this model, we can look to those countries of Latin America and Asia and Africa, where the rich don't pay taxes, and the poorest live in prison labor type situation or eke out their living in garbage dumps.

Why not address the cause, by having the government enforce laws on equal opportunity, wages and working conditions, providing housing, food and healthcare to the millions of people they will never meet?

These are the people Democrats vote to support, called weak, compromisers and 'statists' or part of the evil government. It requires a strong government to overcome those who in the private sector who want to discriminate and force others to bow their religious extremism, and/or live at the permission of the rich.

Oh good grief. I think I'm on the wrong thread with this. I'll come back and edit and delete later because I'm on my way out the door in a few minutes.

But I don't see any venality in Manning. I may be wrong.