So we've got this discussion thread under my "Any questions?" article about the deaths of the Hussein boys. What exactly is the right way to play this? Photos, yea or nay? Cleaned up or au natural? These involve some tricky judgment calls.
Yet in the middle of this reality, our discussion gets took over by Jesus and pacifism. Natalie is the principle advocate of non-violence. It turns into some analysis of Mennonite vs Reformed Calvanist viewpoints.
All the WWJD speculation in this thread is nice- but has nothing to do with reality and Iraq.
The problem with the Jesus stuff is that it just isn't true. If you in fact try to follow the pacifist model, you'll just end up getting killed- like Jesus. Except that real life ain't a fairy tale, and you don't come back from the dead.
I do not say this just to hurt people's feelings or pick a fight. I say it because it is true, and because we are dealing with real life and death issues. We do not have the luxury of indulging our fantasy lives here, unless we are willing to get a lot of people killed doing so.
Now, it was all well and good for MLK to be all peaceful in his protest. He was dealing with Americans, who are basically good people. He appealed to the consciences of white people. Fortunately, they had consciences to appeal to. It's good to avoid violence where you reasonably can.
Try an appeal to conscience with a Baath party dickhead, or some Muslim radical, though. See what it gets you. [HINT: the correct answer is "shot."]
Article comments
1 - Rodney Welch
Basically good people, my ass. Getting a message through the thick hardened hateful skull of the so-called "greatest generation" took bloodshed, and it wound up killing not only King but Medgar Evers, Emmett Till, the four little girls in Alabama, and God knows how many others along the way. Where blacks were concerned, Americans throughout the South in the 1950s weren't too far below the Baath Party today or the Nazis in Germany. They were pure evil -- and it took non-violence to break their back. There would have been no Civil Rights Movement without the principles of Jesus Christ and Gandhi that were passed on from one man, Bayard Rustin, to another, King.
2 - Al Barger
If the white folk were the third part as evil as the Baathists much less the Nazis, MLKs non-violent resistance would never have worked. He'd have been shot down years earlier, and black folk would still be slaves. Bad as Jim Crow was, it was but a pimple on the ass of the evilness of Nazis.
Non-violent persuasion only works when you are dealing with people who want to be good. It is less than useless with truly evil people.
3 - Rodney Welch
Oh how woefully ignorant you are. The attempts on King's life were many; his house was bombed, did you know that? J. Edgar Hoover and his stormtroopers tried to get him to commit suicide. Those are just two.
It doesn't have anything to do with your candyass notions of wanting to be good. Non-violent resistance worked, as I see it, because it is based on the idea that aggression feeds on aggression, whereas non-aggression -- in this particular case, anyway -- simply wears aggression down. There is only so long you can beat on a defenseless person -- either death will take him (as it took many of the Freedom Riders, as it also took Cheney , Schwerner, and Goodman) or the thug will be exhausted, physically and morally.
There's no native goodness to Americans; there is native goodness to their laws. It's because we have a constitution based on the freedom of people to live that kept the wannabe Nazis of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, New York, South Carolina and California from going as far as they wanted to.
Nazism and racism have always gone hand in hand; the daily newspaper ought to tell you that much.
4 - Al Barger
Yeah, that non-violence schtick would really wear Saddam Hussein down, in that his finger would get tired after pulling the trigger a few thousand times to thin out the ranks of wishful thinking pacifists. Then he'd just have to have his boys take shifts.
And if there's no native goodness to Americans, who made those good laws?
5 - Rodney Welch
A lot of corpses who spend most of their time flipping over everytime Bush opens his mouth.
But let's not confuse the issue. You are of the opinion that Christianity or non-violence is useless against evil unless you are dealing with people who "want" to be good; my contention is that the measure of its strength is that it defeated people who in many, many cases remained evil; non-violence swept over the Bull Connors, and it helped form the consciousness of coming generations.
6 - The Theory
well this is sad... an article about, *gasp*, TOPIC DRIFT!!!!
I mean, really, wah wah boo hoo. Shit happens and so does topic drift. if you can't handle it without going on a rampage, get offline.
peace.
7 - debbie
Let's see... what was it that stopped Hitler????? Was it the pacifists actions of the Jews.... or was it the forceful actions of the military?????
8 - andy
I would point out that Christ taught us how to live peacefully w/ our neighbors "WHEN POSSIBLE AS FAR AS IT DEPENDS ON YOU." However, the Bible has definately given nations the right to "govern by the sword".
9 - Eric Olsen
I am sorry to see Rodney so bitter. Nonviolence, I believe, is only effective when leaders care about public opinion. No, the hard core racists were not changed, but the public zeitgeist was taken from them because a majority of leaders were willing to follow majority popular opinion that when faced with the very ugly truth, did want to "do good." Same with India and the British.
If you do not wish to ascribe an inherent goodness to Americans or Brits, you must recognize their institutionalized desire to be better.
10 - Al Barger
No doubt Rodney gets good internal emotional benefits from the feelings of moral superiority he gets from slandering his countrymen. Good for him.
Back in reality, however, he's just wrong and hateful. Even Lester Maddox on his worst day was no kind of Nazi. Did he kill even one person, ever? Advocate such?
He had a crappy attitude toward black folk, and didn't want them in his place of business. That's not good, but it's not genocide either.
Not letting black folk use the restroom, or making them sit at the back of the bus was wrong, but in no way comparable to Dachau.
11 - Rodney Welch
Slander? Sorry, Al -- sometimes I'm a little too careless with the truth.
First of all, if you want to be technical, Al, most Nazi Party members never killed Jews. Killing harmless people takes some amount of training. Still, they were inculcated in the belief that Jews were sub-human and they supported measures taken against them. Can you honestly say Lester Maddox wouldn't have been ripe for a race war? The man who handed out ax-handles?
You say: "Not letting black folk use the restroom, or making them sit at the back of the bus was wrong, but in no way comparable to Dachau."
There was a lot of bloodshed involved in trying to get that changed; none of which you have acknowledged. To begin with, the Jim Crow laws undoubtedly shared the philosophy and overall spirit of Nazism; these laws criminalized any kind of racial mixing on several levels; white people, for example, could be arrested for going into a black bar in Louisiana. And lynchings in many cases went largely unpunished in several states because white juries wouldn't convict white people. Any state that basically declares -- as most of the South did up to the middle of the 20th Century -- that races should be seperate and whose laws were enforced under the understanding that one race was superior to another, and which kept the other race under its heel through threats and intimidation -- well, I'm sorry, the seeds of Nazism are there for all to see.
12 - Al Barger
"The seeds of Nazism" perhaps, but an acorn isn't an oak tree, and Americans drew back from that. There was wicked violence against black folk and others who tried to help them.
In particular, it was especially wrong for the legal system to basically look the other way at the occasional lynching. That was wicked, but still many miles away from the the government doing it, and doing it wholesale.
Bringing it back to the Christian theme of the post, I specifically reject the claim common among Christians that all sins are basically equal; Sin-is-sin in the eyes of God, and any imperfection renders you unfit for His company.
In the real world, where men are risen animals rather than fallen angels, some sins are far, far worse than others.
13 - Rodney Welch
"Americans drew back from that" -- sure took them long enough, didn't it? A good century after the Civil War before an effective Civil Rights Bill was passed, and the path to get there was one of riots, police dogs, lynchings, assassinations, bombings, beatings, broken bones, threats, fear, humilation and intimidation. No easy road.
14 - Lance Perkins
God knows Jesus, God does not know you. If you don't have faith in Jesus by having the holy spirit alive in yourself then God will never know you, as it is only Jesus in you that God will recognize.
Jesus loves you, died for all who call upon his name and have faith in him.
Search these things and listen to what you hear, personally if you can't step outside and look at the world around you and know that a being not subject to your finite mind was responsible for everything you see, I can't understand you.
Stop relying on yourself and put Jesus in control and you will want no more and the answers will come.
Just read the word, it's that simple.
The Chief of all Sinners
Lance Perkins