Political Crossfire Forums

Was this speech widely printed/broadcast at the time, or did it only gain attention later on?

Government secrecy is small potatoes compared to public complacency.

The NSA secretly spied on countless innocent citizens.Then we found out about it and the majority of people don't really seem phased.

But what happens when people do take interest in issues beyond their tiny little world. We post pictures of Joseph Kony or a pink "=" sign in our Facebook profiles. Or sign online petitions. The internet has just allowed us to feel like we're part of a social movement without doing anything. Probably a contributing factor to OWS failing when people attempted to go out and do something in real life.

People are also so apathetic about this kind of stuff because they don't believe they can make a difference, however, political organizing is a real thing. People do it for a living and often achieve their objectives. It's just an actual skill that people would have to learn and put work into. I know it isn't realistic to expect the masses to take up political organizing as a side hobby, but it annoys me when people use the easy out of "i can't make a difference" rather than acknowledging the truth: "it's not really that important to me". I couldnt learn how to build a car in 30 minutes, but I don't claim that it's impossible to build cars. I just don't want to invest the time and energy.

There's a reason for that. I explained it briefly in my preceding post.

People can't make a difference unless they act in unison. Things like government secrecy exist to prevent this. Political organizing is a real thing but when people do it effectively they end up dead. It does lead to change, though. The outrage of the American public at the appalling way the labor movement in the USA was crushed lead to the adoption of modern labor standards. Totally inadequate still to this day, but far better than what came before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_o ... and_events

People have been trying to organize labor in North American since the 1600s it's just not a well known aspect of US history in the US because it's not our finest hour so there's usually some mention of it but glossed over in the most superficial way when it is probably the most critical aspect of US history in regard to the development of the modern world.