The United States has a startling ability to take its most angry, edgy radicals and turn them into cuddly eunuchs. The process begins the moment they die. Mark Twain is remembered as a quipster forever floating down the Mississippi River at sunset, while his polemics against the violent birth of the American empire lie unread and unremembered.Martin Luther King is remembered for his prose-poetry about children holding hands on a hill in Alabama, but few recall that he said the US government was "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." But perhaps the greatest act of historical castration is of Jack London. This man was the most-read revolutionary Socialist in American history, agitating for violent overthrow of the government and the assassination of political leaders -- and he is remembered now for writing a cute story about a dog.
http://www.slate.com/id/2261928/pagenum/all/
