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Location: Nashville, Tennessee, United States

12/19/2002

Undermining America
Ex-journalist-turned peace activist Colman McCarthy "says kids need to study closely the history of the peace movement, starting with the lives and ideas of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, the Berrigan brothers and other radicals. And he wants to teach kids that American violence goes hand-in-hand with widely accepted conventionalities such as economic competition, conspicuous consumption, tax cuts, U.S. foreign policy and gigantic Pentagon budgets."

Ugh. Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be taught by this fool.

Incidentally, the story about this "former journalist" violates a basic rule of good journalism: no one-source stories. Especially not a fawning one-source profile where the profile subject is the source. (Yeah, I know - there is one quote in the story from one other person, but it's basically a quote that agrees with McCarthy, so that hardly counts). If the reporter made an effort to find one person to challenge McCarthy's anti-American views, the story doesn't indicate so.