One hundred years ago, 1913, happens to have been a pivotal year in American history:
- February 3 – The 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, authorizing the Federal government to impose and collect income taxes.
- March 3 – The Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913 takes place in Washington, D.C. led by Inez Milholland on horseback.
- April 8 – The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is passed, dictating the direct election of senators.
- August 13 – Invention of stainless steel by Harry Brearley in Sheffield.
- October 31 – The Lincoln Highway, the first automobile road across the United States, is dedicated.
- The Ford Motor Company introduces the first moving assembly line, reducing chassis assembly time from 12½ hours in October to 2 hours, 40 minutes. Although Ford is not the first to use an assembly line, his successful adoption of one sparks an era of mass production.
- December 23 – The Federal Reserve System is created as the central banking system of the United States by Woodrow Wilson's signature of the Federal Reserve Act.
We have
from the New York Times
That is not to say that Mr. Greenwald’s work is suspect, only that the tendentiousness of ideology creates its own narrative. He has been everywhere on television taking on his critics, which seems more like a campaign than a discussion of the story he covered.
Activists can and often do reveal the truth, but the primary objective remains winning the argument. That includes the argument about whether a reporter has to be politically and ideologically neutral to practice journalism.
History is not over now any more than it was in 1913. The attempt to shape the next one hundred years is just as active now as it was when businessmen gathered to create the Federal Reserve System. The uphill struggle for gay rights is just as out of place in a supposedly "modern" world now as the women's suffrage was one hundred years ago. The limits of government power are just as much in question now as when US ratified income tax one hundred years ago.
Exactly what then is Mr. David Carr claiming when he distinguishes himself from "activists"? That he has no opinion on the power of corporations, equal rights or limits of government? That moral neutrality in the face of injustice isn't wrong?
No what Mr. Carr and most NYT journalists are really arguing is that history is over. That our current system of governance will easily stand for the next hundred years. So anyone that desires change enough to ignore this permanence is an "activist" with an "agenda". The very term activist implies its corresponding NYT passivist - nothing to see here ladies and gentlemen - move along.
Judging whether is system is stable or not is difficult. Imagine you are in orbit around the Earth. Each time gravity pulls you back to the planet you have to judge whether or not you are on the same trajectory as last time. If not what sort of orbit are you in?
But to think of 2113 as more much more similar to 2013 than 2013 is to 1913 - that requires the kind of hubris only a soon to fail ruling class demonstrates. How dare anyone challenge what is and what will be?
Of course not every article in NYT is like that. There is also
But so much of the struggle today revolves around merely trying to hold on to quickly diminishing resources — staving off the shuttering of a relatively lousy school or a cluster of low-rise public housing or a health clinic. A great deal of the daily work of the Anti-Eviction Campaign focuses on keeping people from being forced out of their homes in the first place. Members stand in front of houses to physically blockade evictions. J. R. regularly accompanies them to court, and a lawyer provides free legal assistance at weekly meetings. As J. R. and his fellow activists see it, the beautiful thing about the home takeovers is that they capitalize on the isolation and abandonment of these neighborhoods and create their own self-contained, do-it-yourself empowerment zones — at once providing housing, work, job training and the beginnings of redevelopment.
The idea for the Anti-Eviction Campaign actually came from South Africa. Toussaint Losier had traveled there to study the direct-action tactics of an organization called the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign. Its members had been putting their bodies in front of homes to block evictions, building their own squatter settlements on unused land. So J. R. and Toussaint (who got to know each other when the chairman of the South African group visited Cabrini-Green) started a Chicago chapter together. J. R. realized they didn’t need to build lean-tos in Chicago’s black community. They had all the empty homes they required. “We want to do what Roosevelt did,” he said of the home takeovers. “If the government won’t provide public housing for the people, the people must provide it for themselves.”
No question of Mr. Austen's preferences or any slant towards stability.