I don't want to be a "link-and-comment" blogger--not that there isn't value to links and comments, or that they can't tell you a lot about the person providing them. It's just that this blog is more valuable to me as a place to work out my ideas and thoughts than as a collection of annotated links.
That being said, here's a link from the Washington Post, The Urge to Help, The Obligation Not To. And a comment--read it.
It's powerful stuff, written by Ariel Dorfman. According to the bio on the page, Dorfman, "a native of Chile, teaches at Duke University. His latest books are Exorcising Terror: The Incredible Unending Trial of General Augusto Pinochet (Seven Stories Press) and In Case of Fire in a Foreign Land: New and Collected Poems From Two Languages (Duke University Press)."
(Thanks, Eszter!)
Thanks. Dorfman's the right sort. And he writes from a space very few Americans can.
I decided to print it and hand it out to my freshmen. What a great "persuasive essay"! Not that they couldn't read it on line, but most of them read as little as possible outside of class, and unless it were to be a quiz item, it would be ignored.