‘Might Does Not Make Right; Being in the Right Does.’

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/10/nytnow/top-10-comments-standing-rock-donald-trump-john-glenn.html

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Here are the top 10 comments of the week on our digital platforms, as selected by our readers and the journalists who moderate nearly every comment.

1. May this also be a victory for the power of peaceful protest. Might does not make right; being in the right does.

— NM from New York, reacting to an article about the Department of the Army’s announcement that it will not drill an oil pipeline beneath the Missouri River near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota, a major victory for that tribe and the thousands of people who flocked to the site to protest.

This comment received more than 1,100 reader recommendations.

2. None of these people have any competence or experience to lead these specific agencies. They don’t need any. They are not being tasked to run anything. They are being tasked to take the thing apart. That’s how he is going to make America great again. Just take the place apart. Even Trump knows that the wrecking ball only prepares the site. He has never stated what he wants to build to replace what came down. That’s because he doesn’t know what to build. Trump will leave a mess that will take decades to clean up.

— Bruce Rozenblit in Kansas City, Mo., reacting to an article about President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice of Scott Pruitt, a climate change denialist, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

This comment received more than 2,000 reader recommendations.

3. Let’s not forget that [Jimmy] Carter had to put his business in a blind trust as well. Unfortunately, it was mishandled and he literally "lost the farm" because of his presidency. The founding fathers never intended the office of president to be a full-time exclusive job. Most of them owned businesses outside of politics.

— Janet Elizabeth Schraeder on The Times’s Facebook page, responding to an article about whether Mr. Trump and his three oldest children, all of whom play vital roles in his company, can separate business from politics.

4. It’s impossible to convey to young people today what the Mercury and Apollo (and other) programs represented 50 or so years ago, especially as they concurred with a time of major achievements in the racial civil rights movement (the concurrence of them is too often overlooked).

Rest in peace, John Glenn and your fellow pioneers, and comfort to your surviving loved ones. And a nation that fondly remembers you and your achievements.

— Karl from Melrose, Mass., reacting to an article about the death of John Glenn, who was the first American to orbit the earth and later served four terms as an Ohio senator. He was 95.

This comment received more than 270 reader recommendations.

5. As a U.S.-born Filipino-American with family on both sides of the Pacific, I’ve had several heated discussions with close family in Manila about Duterte, whom they seem to all support and adore. These are well educated upper middle class people and yet they seem to think that he will bring pride, order, and equitable development to the Philippines. Sometimes I wonder what I really have in common with them at all.

— ImGeneParmesan in New York, reacting to an article about Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal antidrug campaign, which has killed thousands of people suspected of being dealers or addicts. .

This comment received more than 370 reader recommendations.

6. I’ve lived in Davao, the Philippines, all my life and I would say that it’s totally unfair to portray our country as some sort of a killing field. First of all, we’ve had extrajudicial killings since after the Marcos regime continuing to this very day.

Now, we finally have a leader that is bold enough to deal with the drug problem and then he takes flak for it? How sad. I’ve seen the changes in Davao with my own two eyes the day he became Mayor in our town. Have you ever wondered why most of us still support him? It is because we’ve had this problem for so long and nobody seems to really push for it in the front burner.

— MJ in the Philippines.

7. Please understand: being a correctional office is welfare for poor, uneducated White men. These are fairly well paying positions, providing for a stable life. Living in all-white neighborhoods with minimal positive interaction with minorities create and maintain biases. I have worked for the [New York State] Department of Corrections and have a good vantage point.

These prison systems need prisoners, so catch words like “Law and Order” and programs like “stop and frisk” are more important than racial equality in the criminal justice system because it guarantees more prisoners, delivering job security. This is even more pronounced in states with private prisons.

Summary: these biases, this institutional racism, NEEDS to exist to provide economic stability of poor white people in these rural communities. This is all they have and they will fight to keep it that way. Think about it this way: that there are LESS people going to prison year over year is an actual attack on their futures. Sad.

— Mr. International in Geneva, Switzerland, reacting to an investigation by The New York Times that found systemic racism in New York State prisons.

This comment received more than 160 reader recommendations.

8. It was shocking and ironic to find that as a full-time 2008 Obama campaign volunteer, I myself had slipped through the cracks, with doubled insurance premiums and no qualifications for help of any kind. I even suspect this gap may have been political, as Dems hoped red state voters would turn blue to get Medicaid expansion. If so, it didn’t work, and the true victims, like those in the article, are those of us whose real lives have ended up caught in the middle between ideological disputes of decision makers.

— GW in the United States, reacting to an article about Americans who cannot afford insurance under the Affordable Care Act but make too much money to receive Medicaid in their states.

9. Austrians appear to have actually learned from history. If only more countries would follow their example.

— Caroline Miller on The Times’s Facebook page, responding to an article about the rejection of a far-right presidential candidate by Austrian voters in an election on Sunday.

This comment received more than 280 likes.

10. Writing as a long time racing cyclist, this report confirms what many have known for decades, and confirms (for me) the selective, double standard justice that many athletes have faced. Eastern bloc nations have systematically doped their athletes for many decades. This was well known at the time, but the testing science wasn’t good enough to prove it with absolute certainty, and international politics made it “inconvenient” to press the case. While western and US athletes also doped, those cases were (and are) matters of individual choice rather than large scale, state sponsored efforts. Because of this, western athletes were, and are, disproportionately punished when caught. Lance Armstrong had all his Tour de France titles stripped, and is being sued by the US government for over $100 million, while Russian athletes have mostly kept their medals and prize money, and are simply being slapped on the wrist for their offenses. While there is no question that Armstrong doped (he admitted it), he was primarily punished for being a bully and a jerk (which he was).

Perhaps it’s time for a rethink, and perhaps it’s time for some equal justice.

— Stevevelo in Milwaukee, reacting to an article about a report by the World Anti-Doping Agency showing that a state-sponsored Russian doping program affected 1,000 athletes in 30 sports.