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Resistance Is Futile! The Repressive Rhetoric of Historical Inevitability

Resistance Is Futile! The Repressive Rhetoric of Historical Inevitability
This March 21, 1965 file photo shows Martin Luther King, Jr. and his civil rights marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., heading for the capitol in Montgomery. AP Photo
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Commentary

The idea that there is a right and a wrong “side of history” is a common weapon in the rhetorical armory of progressives, as well as totalitarians. It may give hope to the discouraged—as when Martin Luther King Jr. assured followers that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Paul Adams
Paul Adams
Author
Paul Adams is a professor emeritus of social work at the University of Hawai‘i, and was professor and associate dean of academic affairs at Case Western Reserve University. He is the co-author of "Social Justice Isn’t What You Think It Is," and has written extensively on social welfare policy and professional and virtue ethics.
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