***. “I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man, who having stepped outside rational morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently.” [ C. S. Lewis ]

this post presents excerpts from. “On this MLK Day, a letter from Minnesota” [Haley Taylor Schlitz; Minnesota Star Tribune; 1/19/26 ]: “To Dr. King and my fellow Minnesotans..” :

3]. “We are encouraged to treat what is happening here as a local disturbance. A Minnesota problem. A protest problem. Something to be managed. But what is happening here is not simply “tension.” It is an argument about the character of public power. When a president threatens a state with “reckoning and retribution,” he is not using the language of neutral law. he is using the language of punishment. A government can enforce laws without promising vengeance. When it promises vengeance, it tells you what it believes the law is for.””

5] ‘..power does not only suppress through force. It also suppresses through framing. It trains the public to treat discomfort as disorder, and disorder as the real threat. It persuades decent people that their primary civic duty is to keep things calm, even if the calm is purchased with someone else’s fear.”

8] “You insisted on the interrelatedness of communities, and you rejected the narrow “outside agitator” idea. You insisted that no one in this country should be treated as an outsider anywhere within it….But this is not a Minnesota-only problem. It is a national test with a Minnesota address.”

11] “So what does moral clarity look like in Minnesota this MLK Day? It looks like refusing to confuse quiet with peace, and refusing to treat fear as normal. It looks like insisting that investigations be credible, independent and transparent enough to earn public trust, not simply being declared trustworthy by authority. It looks like leaders who speak with discipline and courage, and citizens who do not outsource their conscience.”

*** “Our character is but the stamp on our souls of the free choices of good and evil we have made through life.”
[ Cunningham Geikie ]

1] “This year, MLK Day arrives with masked federal agents fanning out across theTwin Cities and beyond, with unmarked vehicles and street-level operations reshaping daily life. and with a growing chill…”

2]. “Dr. King, we are not living in your era, but we are facing a familiar question: “Is ‘order” being used to protect the public, ot to protect power from accountability?”

4] “whatever your politics, you can feel the difference between a justice system that invites public trust and a justice system that treats the public concern as something to be contained.”

6] “Minnesota is drowning in effects-talk. We are being pulled into arguments about tone, about disruption, about whether grief is being expressed the “right” way. You can hear it…..You can see it…..And you can feel it…..what it means to live in a state where daily life is being deliberately reshaped by fear.”

7] “But the cause is what keeps demanding attention. The integrity of an investigation….The fear many communities feel….and when citizens and lawful residents begin to move through public life as if visibility itself is risk.”

9] “If a president can promise retribution against a state for its politics, that is not just rhetoric. it is a message to every other state. if federal institutions can be pressured into secrecy or political targeting, and the public is told to accept silence as a strategy, that is not just an internal dispute. It is an instruction about what accountability will look like from here forward.”

10] “If the new dream is a nightmare, it is not because people are speaking out. It is because trhe public is being trained to accept intimidation as governance, and to accept silence as legitimacy.”

***. “The Aggregate happiness of the society, which is best promoted by the practice of virtuous policy, is, or ought to be, the end of all government.” [ George Washington; 11/1/1790 ]