I had no interest in politics or in drafting any political manifestos, but my friend Liu Xiaobo was right when he said, "To gain and preserve your freedom and dignity, there is no other way except to fight".
The Ripon Society, an organization of Republican intellectuals, last week released a study entitled "Politics and Conscription" that urges speedy abolition of the draft & total reliance on a professional military establishment.
But the assembly's rush is also prompting charges that it is letting politics cramp the drafting of a document intended as the definitive social contract.
Raymond Moley, a former professor of politics at Columbia, drafted Roosevelt's 1933 address, and its best-known phrase, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself", was slipped in at the last moment by another aide, Louis Howe.
It was also a chance to see how the clubs acquitted themselves within the micro-politics of the draft room itself – in this case a cavernous ballroom at Baltimore Convention Center, packed with technical staff, media, hopeful players and parents, and a healthy contingent of rowdy supporters.
SINCE its revolution in 2011, battalions of experts have advised Tunisia on everything from how to get young people into politics to how to draft election regulations.
The problem for the charity sector and campaigning groups that might want to take advantage of the benefits of charitable status is that the commission's definition of what constitutes politics - published in draft guidance on how it will interpret public benefit in the light of the 2006 Charities Act - is so deadeningly broad.
Both men were drafted into politics late in life as finance ministers before getting the top job.
An economic bureaucrat, he was drafted into politics as finance minister during the financial crisis of 1991, when India almost went bust.
But unlike Frank Capra's Hollywood vision of a naïve Boy Scout leader drafted into politics who triumphs over the evils of Washington, Thomas H. Kean is ultimately no Mr. Smith.
The same men also violated a cardinal principle of politics and warfare by drafting citizens for combat without first building strong public support for their cause.
