60years before and 75 years before

Yet more than any other figure,
Gandhi destroyed not just the British empire,
but the very idea of empire.
He did it by holding up to the British and to the world a mirror
in which they could see themselves—preaching law, democracy and rights at home,
while oppressing abroad. It is that vision which won out, in the latter half of the 20th century.

http://blog.prospectblogs.com/2008/01/30/gandhi-60-years-on/
I hope my computer is not infested with 8002 8001

September 11, 2001 is not just the central date of recent American history.
It has decisively transformed the intellectual climate of the liberal and democratic states of the West.
After further attacks occurred in Europe, or were narrowly avoided, fear is on the prowl.
Its password is “terrorism,” the wish that commands all is called “security,” and the enemy it identifies is “Islam.”
In this climate head scarves, sacrifices, the construction of mosques and Muslim religious instruction become the embattled basic questions.
The secret service, the police, the customs officials and the armed forces prepare for battle.

The citizen is taught that he must sacrifice freedom if he wants more security; at least he must be willing to part with the privacy of his personal data. Data privacy, once the paradigm of a free society, suddenly takes on the appearance of a quaint piece of furniture from a by-gone era, a time in which we could afford a bit of privacy.
Now we must close ranks, they tell us, and all prepare for the battle and the sacrifice of our own lives.



A free society that wishes to remain free must learn to cope with danger.
It must bear danger, when necessary, without running immediately to call the national security state, the police and the military.
Only a self-conscious society, which desists from issuing supplementary plenary powers to the state security agencies every time a threat arises, will be able to conquer its inner fear. When sacrifices must be made, then we should be able to complain about them privately and publicly.
But we have no need of a metaphysics of sacrifice, much less a political theory of the sacrifice of citizens, furnished with the incense of dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/01/hbc-90002280