Do Not Fear Islam
To my readers:
I’ve been busy but have compiled several ideas for blog posts on a variety of subjects. Right now, however, I want to give you an op-ed column my local daily newspaper would not publish. It has footnotes because the editors demanded them of me on this subject. I wrote letters to the editor of this paper several times a year and I have my local following. This is the only subject for which the Editor has demanded I source my letters. The essay comes from the time of the controversy over the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. I even had to prove that the building in question is not visible from Ground Zero since it is two blocks uptown and a block to the east. I used Google Earth. A week from today (May 1) I will be speaking at a five-part series on Islam on how Jews and Judaism relate to Islam. We’ve been getting upwards of a hundred folks attending fro our small town. The message here will be part of what I will have to say then.
Do Not Fear Islam
On September 11 this year my college classmate Laurie walked the ten minutes from her loft to Ground Zero to witness the demonstrations going on that day. She writes, “I spent more time in the anti-Park51 crowd than the pro- side because I wanted to talk to people, try to educate and to find out why they thought what they did so strongly as to come to NY to demonstrate. I got the feeling that many of them are extremely misinformed and many are unfortunately genuinely very scared because of all that they do not know and the misinformation they’ve been fed, and of course plain old fashioned fear of people not like themselves,…” A recent Pew poll shows that people who know Muslims are less likely to fear and hate Muslims. Since Islam is a minority religion in this country (population percentage is estimated at one to two percent) most Americans have never met a Muslim let alone have any personal or work relationship with one. More than half of Americans say they know little or nothing about Islam.[1]
In my bachelor days I had a landlord who believed that the Jews were in cahoots with the Chinese to take over the world and destroy Western civilization. He was a Bosnian and the first Muslim I ever knew socially. Not that he was a very religious Muslim. He liked a drink from time to time. Once he lent me a book by Henry Ford called “The International Jew.” This was the source of my landlord’s information. Ford bought a newspaper (The Dearborn Independent) expressly to serve as a medium for his anti-Semitic writing. Every Ford dealership in America gave away booklets from these writings and Ford sponsored the weekly radio “sermons” of Father Coughlin also attacking the supposed Jewish subversion of America. He had about a third of the national radio audience and was the Glenn Beck of his day combining paranoid politics and religion. Among American supporters of Hitler in the 1930s were American hero Charles Lindbergh and Readers’ Digest Magazine.[2] Even after World War II, when the extent of the horrors committed by the Nazis was known, there were politicians in this country who tried to block visas for Jewish refugees on the grounds they might be subversives.[3] To this day you can find these same anti-Jewish rants all over the Internet.
When I read, see, or hear the Islamic faith accused of trying to take over the world or “Islamicize” America I see the same ugly forces at work. We’ve been here before. The ravings of extremists in the early 20th century led to the Holocaust. I shudder to think what the current anti-Islamic rants might lead to. This is so especially because the fear and hatred of Muslims is being actively promoted by politicians and media stars for their own purposes. Let me be clear: I see Islamophobia as a bigotry that relies on the ignorance of most Americans about Islam and the people whose faith is Islam.
Who are America’s Muslims? As with all large groups of people there are all kinds: religious and secular, liberal and conservative, smart and not-so-smart, open-minded and prejudiced, law-abiding and not. Public opinion polls show that the vast majority of Muslims here want to fit in and be accepted. [4] They are seeking ways to practice their religion as a minority. Islam teaches a moral life and its social values are the same as those of any religious tradition, by which I mean they teach the Golden Rule. Do they have a vision of all of humanity being Muslim? Some do, but then some Christians want to see every human soul within their faith. Both have a history of bloodshed in pursuit of such goals. The Koran is essentially a book of sermons preaching morality and kindness. Some pick out verses that have ugly implications, but the same could be done with our Bible. Some Muslim fundamentalists take verses from the Koran out of their contexts to give them violent applications. Some Jews and Christians have done the same with the Bible. Contrary to the common impression terrorism is against what Islam teaches about war and many authorities around the world have said so without reservation.[5] The question is why those decrees have received virtually no acknowledgement in American news media.
America’s Muslims are facing the same kinds of prejudice that immigrants have faced throughout American history. The American Muslims I have known personally hope that they will, in the end, be accepted as a normal, accepted part of the American people. Our great national tradition of pluralism which makes us a beacon of hope to the whole world requires no less.
[1] http://www.sacbee.com/2010/08/29/2990240/rise-of-anti-islamic-feeling-has.html and http://people-press.org/report/647/
[2] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lindbergh/sfeature/fallen.html and http://rationalrevolution.net/war/american_supporters_of_the_europ.htm (note that Prescott Bush, father of George H W and grandfather of George W, was among Hitler’s admirers)
[4] http://pewresearch.org/assets/pdf/muslim-americans.pdf and http://www.muslimindex.org/index.html the latter reference is to a site that deals with a variety of issues and both of these sites are excellent resources for your writers.
[5] http://www.freemuslims.org/ This is another good source and it covers many issues.
How I Became a Pacifist
Actually I don’t really know how I became a pacifist. Looking back I held this view by the time I was 14 years old. I was not aware that my feelings had a name until much later.
I found an audio file from the one time I testified before a Congressional committee. This was for a hearing for a piece of legislation that has been kicking around Washington for about half a century. It is called the Peace Tax Fund. I needed to refer to it in an email discussion and found they have a website. http://www.peacetaxfund.org/ and on that site there are four audio files, one of which is mine from that hearing. In that speech I told of my pacifism. You can find it on that website (I have no idea how to post it here).
One of the books that influenced me as a teenager was “Heavenly Discourse” by C.E.S. Wood, a wonderful satiric work. I’m not sure why it was in my mother’s library, but it is a witty and clever book about the issues of the day – 1927. It consists of dialogues among God, Jesus, Satan, and a wide variety of authors and activists like Mark Twain, Robert Ingersoll, Rabelais, and many others. This book is long, long out of print, but Amazon has third party sellers who have it.
In the chapter “A Pacifist Enters Heaven” (which I guess introduced me to the term) we find the following bit of dialogue.
From A Pacifist enters Heaven—in bits:
BATTERED SOUL: I’m a pacifist.
GOD: A what?
BATTERED SOUL: A pacifist. I believe in Jesus and peace.
GOD: So you are a Christian?
BATTERED SOUL: O, no. I really do believe in peace.
Somewhere in the book someone says that the soldiers sent into combat believe they are fighting for peace or freedom or their nation, but the reality is that this is a lie. They are sent into combat for purposes that are advantageous to the government and profitable to war profiteers.
In a sophomore world history class, when we got to World War I, I repeated this idea. About two periods later, between periods, I was backed up against a wall by a group of ROTC students in uniform. They threatened to beat me up if I ever defamed soldiers again by saying such a thing. I knew then I was onto something.
I have thought since that these boys, when they first became men, were probably sent to fight in Viet Nam. Some, no doubt, did not come back whole in mind or body and others did not come back alive. That thought haunts me.
Passover a la Les Miz
The Passover story is a universal tale of liberation. This performance of a Les Miz version is a great illustration.
WHY I PERSEVERE
WHY I PERSEVERE
The Talmud says, “You are not required to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to desist from it.” (Pirkei Avot 2:21)
I’ve been watching a lot of Netflix videos on social activism lately. One of these was a documentary by Harry Belafonte about himself called “Sing Your Song.” For those who only know Belafonte as a singer or actor, you are missing the most important thing about him. He has been a human rights activist all of his life. He is now 86 years old. Belafonte says he would love to take his money and settle in on a nice beach house somewhere with his wife to live out his life in comfort. His soul will not allow that. There is still too much wrong in the world.
This is basically how I feel. I have all the makings of a quiet retirement with Phyllis who has endured me for going on 45 years. We have a very nice life in a beautiful place. We have friends and the amenities of an area people who visit sometimes fall in love with as we did. I suppose, after half a century of activism (I started at age 15) I could decide I deserve to let others take over and rest on whatever laurels I have earned.
To do that I would have to cut myself off from the world. The injustices and other evils that continue to plague our world and our nation still get under my skin and inspire me to write, speak, and be active. Of course, since leaving NYC my approach has become “act locally but think globally.” I know the world will go on without me if I opt out. I know there are others, including people much younger than I am, who will continue the great work of bringing peace and justice to the world. My contributions are very small compared with those of some of the people I have met and worked with. I was once teased because I’ve never been arrested. According to an FOIA request I have no FBI file.
Nonetheless I feel a powerful urge not to stand by and stop working for the world I want to come into being. Even after all of these years I might still have something to contribute. I cannot stop now. I probably will never stop until I leave this world.
It is in that spirit that I tell you, my readers, that I hope you can see and feel what is wrong in the world and will feel compelled to do something about it. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” (Margaret Mead) The same applies to each of us as individuals.
I’ll close with another quote from Pirkei Avot in the Talmud. “The day is short, the labor vast, the toilers idle, the reward great, and the Master of the house is insistent.” (2:20)
The Shelby County Case
The Curmudgeons have been discussing the Shelby County case seeking to overturn the 1965 Voting Rights Act. This, so far, has been an email discussion. Those supporting Shelby County’s position are arguing that it is about racial gerrymandering and that it has caused districts to be drawn along racial lines (true) and that is somehow detrimental to the interests of the Democratic Party. This is my latest response.
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Gerrymandering is not explicit in the 1965 bill.
Section 2 says
SEC. 2. No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.
This is a prohibition on using electoral districting for the purpose of restricting voting rights on a racial basis. Anyone against that? Get your white hood dry-cleaned. The accusation is made that this law has been used to create districts to favor racial groups. I do not favor racism in any form including such an action. However there is a history of this law which reflects restriction on such uses for this law.
(From a Wikipedia article on the VRA) Section 2 contains a general prohibition on voting discrimination, enforced through federal district court litigation. Congress amended this section in 1982, prohibiting any voting practice or procedure that has a discriminatory result. The 1982 amendment provided that proof of intentional discrimination is not required. The provision focused instead on whether the electoral processes are equally accessible to minority voters. This section is permanent and does not require renewal.
The article is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act#Section_2
In any case the Shelby County case is not about section 2, but about Section 5. This part opens as follows.
SEC. 5. Whenever a State or political subdivision with respect to which the prohibitions set forth in section 4(a) are in effect shall enact or seek to administer any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting different from that in force or effect on November 1, 1964, such State or subdivision may institute an action in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for a declaratory judgment that such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color, and unless and until the court enters such judgment no person shall be denied the right to vote for failure to comply with such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure.
Compassionate Listening
I have had the privilege of meeting many extraordinary people in my life. They include some who are very famous and some who are not well known. Recently one of these passed away. Hs name was Rabbi Menachem Froman. There is a wonderful video about him at http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/126661/the-peace-seeking-settler-rabbi?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=fb85a46b7e-3_12_2013&utm_medium=email
I met Rabbi Froman in his home in the settlement of Tekoa during a mission to Israel that gave me new understanding about how to go about making peace. It was sponsored by Compassionate Listening (www.compassionatelistening.org) and was specifically a Jewish mission. There were sixteen of us plus a film crew. In the course of two weeks we met with all kinds of Israelis and Palestinians including settlers, peace activists, PLO officials, Israeli farmers, Palestinian farmers, journalists, and even the founder of Hamas.
Our mission was based on an approach to peacemaking that is controversial among peace activists. Instead of choosing aggressor and victim when approaching the arena of conflict, our mission was to engage people involved in the conflict and get them to talk about it. One of the first steps in making peace is letting everyone understand that they are being heard. This requires setting aside judgment. We had two or three days of training ending with meetings with people who were in on what we were doing.
Then we got on the bus and visited people. Sometimes they were not celebrities or activists. We met with Palestinians living on the West Bank whose houses were under threat of demolition by Israeli authorities. We met with settler activists and also with representatives of the Palestinian authority. We even went to Gaza where we met with the Palestinian governor (after a nearly two-hour meeting he was literally in tears). We met with the head of the local Red Crescent who was a founder of the PLO. He spoke about his childhood in Hebron where some of his friends were Jews until the 1936 massacre. We met with Iyad Seraj, a psychiatrist who believed that our two peoples needed each other to heal from our wounds. (I hope he still feels that way after all that happened in Gaza since then.) We met with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder and spiritual leader of Hamas. We were allowed to ask questions and we did.
In addition we had two week-ends. During the first one we stayed with Palestinian families in Hebron, which has to be the most tense place in the whole land. I love the memory of the hospitality shown by the peasant family I stayed with. Their house, the one I stayed in, was demolished a few months later. I donated to help them pay for new building permits and visited the new home around a decade ago. The second weekend we enjoyed home hospitality in the settlement of Efrat. My host, Joshua, was a remarkable man. He is a settler and an Orthodox Jew but he is also a man of compassion and wisdom who has spent time in Thich Naht Hanh’s Plum Village in France learning Buddhist spiritual traditions. As I left with the group he reminded me that the ear is not only the organ for listening but the organ that provides balance.
On our last night we ate in a café on Ben Yehudah Street near a place where a suicide bomber had killed many people. Next door was a CD store and I was eager to buy Israeli music, especially that which blends Jewish and Arab musical traditions (I have a quite a collection of this genre). The name of the shop was (in Hebrew) “The Way of The Ear.” That just seemed so right.
Infinite Stupidity
“Against stupidity the gods themselves strive in vain.” F. Nietzsche
“Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not sure about the former.” – A. Einstein
What is stupidity and where does it come from? To define stupidity I will use a variation on another famous saying of Einstein’s. “Stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” The original was about nsanity, but I think it works even better for stupidity.
And what causes stupidity? One possible answer is fear or the lack of it.
Fear makes people do stupid things. I doubt many people would argue with that, so let’s apply it. For decades we were taught to be afraid of communists. This resulted in gross violations of our legal rights and a serious distortion of our politics for most of the 20th century. McCarthyism and HUAC, the Black List, J. Edgar Hoover’s obsessive FBI, the 1920 Palmer raids, and more were the result. The ascendancy of the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned us about could only have happened in a climate of fear.
After 9/11 we panicked. The results included severe abridgement of our legal rights and two pointless and unwinnable wars that took up the next decade. Those who profit from fear, still the military-industrial complex, needed a new national bugbear to justify itself. This country’s economy is being sucked dry by a bloated defense budget that takes up at least two thirds of federal discretionary spending and in reality runs to about $1.2 trillion per year. We spend more on wars past, present, and future than the next 16 nations. Fiscal discipline and rational programs would probably cut this enough to take us out of the red within a few years.
Our national fear of crime and drugs means that the United States has a larger percent and a larger number of our citizens in the penal system (incarcerated , paroled , probation) than any other nation on the planet. The numbers at the end of 2009 were as follows. “According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 2,266,800 adults were incarcerated in U.S. federal and state prisons, and county jails at year-end 2010 – about 0.7% of adults in the U.S. resident population. Additionally, 4,933,667 adults at year-end 2009 were on probation or on parole. In total, 7,225,800 adults were under correctional supervision (probation, parole, jail, or prison) in 2009 – about 3.1% of adults in the U.S. resident population.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States
This is not a picture of a healthy society or nation.
The lack of fear where fear would be appropriate also leads to stupidity. The best example I can think of is the economic crash of 2007-8. This was caused by finance institutions gaming our economic system without any regard for consequences to our national economy or the world’s. They made loans that were risky, including those sub-par mortgages. They gambled with other people’s money on schemes that enriched themselves. According to one of my sons, who works in the risk management field, the banks knew that their behavior would lead to a crash, but they kept going anyway because they were making so much money.
We need to heed FDR’s famous warning, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
How can we avoid fear and learn when fear is appropriate? My first advice is to be skeptical and take nothing in government or finance at face value. My second bit of advice comes from the “Dune” series: the litany against fear.
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
The Curmudgeons
Three years ago a friend and I started a discussion club. It’s purpose is dialogue o important issues across ideological lines. We are now over twenty members and the following is a recently posted essay about our group by my fellow founder, Tony.
Curmudgeon Club
From time to time, someone will ask about the Curmudgeon Club. Rather than reinventing a “wheel of explanation”, two discussions are provided below, one each from the two founders.
Rabbi Phil Bentley’s views can be found at his blog, https://pearleafblog.com/; scrolldown to the January 28, 2013, Dialogue: How We Talk.
Tony Jeric’s shared his view in his email of February 14, 2013; see below.
We are all about dialogue by which is meant a civil exchange of ideas, opinions and what we believe to be knowledge. We enter with the conceptual understanding that we are all blindfolded, touching different parts of the cosmic elephant and discussing what we believe to be reality. Sometimes it is not clear we are touching the same animal or are even in the same universe. There is no such thing as a sacred cow that cannot be disputed or more importantly subjected to critical examination. The number one sin that will not be tolerated is a personal attack, i.e. “you are stupid” is not acceptable. “That is a stupid concept” is generally tolerated but becomes infinitely more respectable if followedwith “because of A, B and C”.
The club was intentionally built to be made up of a wide range of varying persuasion by examining letters to the editor in the Times News and offering invitations. Lately membership has grown and without any such overt action but appears to remain balanced.. You will find some members do not fit a classic left right liberal conservative characterization. If you think the club is tilted against your particular beliefs it is most likely because your other associations are comprised of too many people who think like you do. You therefore are not used to your sacred cows being shot at. Get over it.
In any case different crowds show up at different meetings so there will be shifts. One of our objectives is to create (and I am plagiarizing from the former owner of the New Republic) “little mental insurrections”. i.e. bringing in a wide range of knowledge,research, opinion and analysis we may each end up with a reevaluation of what of whatever our own orthodoxy happens to be. Collectively we may stumble into some unique truths found nowhere else. At worst case we will have participated in a civil dialogue that is increasingly hard to come by.
For those among us who are a little more on the timid side – please keep in mind no one is truly an all-encompassing expert on anything so do not be afraid to challenge and ask for verification, substance or proof behind any assertion. Cross examination is a great way to learn more. Do not be afraid to ask questions for clarification such the definition of an unfamiliar term or concept. Most likely half the group would like to ask the same question so you will be doing many a favor. In the same spirit those being asked the question should not take cross examination as a personal attack. “I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable answer.
The club procedures were inspired by meetings previously held by Socrates, Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain. A subject and subject leader for the following month is determined at the start of the current meeting. Ideally there is something to read in advance via e-mail sent out by the subject leader. The subject leader gets 20 minutes to present whatever he/she wishes to convey. There are no interruptions except for clarifications such as for a term definition or to better explain a concept being put forth. Each attendee then gets up to ten minutes to agree, disagree ask more questions etc. After all have had their shot at it we might go around again or break down into free for all over an entirely different subject. We don’t have any official officials. Phil and I are the founding fathers if you will, Harold and I share coming up with a suggested agenda and Barry, being the only self-identified moderate ( we sometimes claim wishy-washy moderate because whoever heard of a flaming moderate) handles the timing bell and the best we have for a moderator.
There is a considerable dialogue by e-mail between meetings. It is very ad hoc. All are welcome to get their two cents in or use the delete button. No offense will be taken if any opt out of some or all of it but do watch out for meeting announcements and info.
Our Impacted Economy
I’ve been thinking about how our economy should work. Also in my mind is Martin Luther’s oft-used metaphor of bowel problems. I think our economy is impacted. Bowels become impacted when nothing moves. There is a Jewish prayer for going to the toilet. In that prayer the blessing of a well-constructed body is praised. “You are blessed, Eternal our God, ruler of the universe, Who formed humans with wisdom and created within us passages and openings. It is well-known before Your glorious throne, that if one of them that if one of them [that should be closed] is open or if [one of them that should be open] is closed, it would be impossible to exist and to stand before You.” What is true of our bodies is, I believe, true of society and of economics in general.
What I see is that corporations and government need each other in many ways. Without going into details (much of which we mostly know anyway) the transcontinental railroad made a lot of our economic growth possible. That was a partnership between government and private spending which benefited American commerce and manufacturing. The fact that doing so was part of why we committed genocide on the aboriginal Americans (I hope Tony is joking about beating them fair and square, because there was nothing fair or square about it). By the same token the railroads also were the occasion for the first regulatory federal controls on interstate commerce:The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. I believe this was also why we created time zones. In the 50s the government created the Interstate Highway System and that was a huge boost for our economy and for our corporations.
Capitalism requires the movement of money and assets. I’ve written this before, but here I am adding a bit of context, I think.
If any of the major segments of our market economy fail to act or are unable to act, the entire economy suffers. Corporations have to invest and government has to spend and consumers have to earn enough money to spend. Over-control of corporate activity stifles economic activity, as the GOP keeps saying, but the failure of government to spend on infrastructure and on needed services to our population and our businesses also stifles economic activity. Failure to pay a living wage with decent benefits also stifles the economy. Government is also responsible for making sure there is a level economic playing field.
It seems to me that our economy is in poor shape and having trouble getting stronger is because corporations are not investing enough in manufacturing here; banks and financial organizations are either sitting on their money or are using what they have (which is often other peoples’ money) instead of financing investments; the governments (federal, state, and local) are now being parsimonious, which slows down needed growth. The real job creators, which is us consumers, are insufficiently funded to spend enough to justify (in the minds of entrepreneurs) investing. Our national infrastructure is an embarrassment and we are seeing increasing failures, especially from our obsolete national power grid and other major systems that are aging and need big funding. Money is not moving enough to sustain economic vitality. Whose fault is that? I place the blame at the feet of the GOP, which seems to understand only what expenditures cost and not what they buy; and our financial institutions and corporations that have gambled with other people’s money and who resist needed regulations to make our system fair and the necessary risks of capitalism real. Corporate board members who pocket the profits instead of investing them in productive investments are a relatively minor prolem, but they do point to the underlying problem: selfishness. Our national motto today ought to be “Ubi Mea.” Romney attacked the 47% for depending on government largess, but he should have been looking in the mirror.
I also blame the Democrats because they have all but abandoned the principles that were their hallmark. They have done so in response to the political climate in DC. From my perspective Clinton and Obama are responsible for that. Obama is often depicted as a leftist or even a marxist (which is just really stupid name calling) when, in fact, he is a moderate a bit to the left of center. I do not have much hope that he will change in his second term despite his rhetoric.
In the end we will need a Roosevelt (Teddy or Franklin) to really shake things up. That was how the Gilded Age ended and the Depression ultimately defeated. Our system must benefit corporations and consumers (all of us) or it will not work. It is government’s responsibility to make that possible. I am always skeptical of government but I believe they can be pushed in the right direction. As it says in the Talmud, “Pray for the welfare of the ruling power, for without it, people would eat each other alive.”
Rebellion Now?
I want to run something by you. This is a response to a letter in today’s local daily which I do not dare submit as a letter there, but which has a question I am asking in earnest. The writer gives several quotes supporting the contention that the public needs to be at least as well armed as the government in case the government turns to oppression. It ends with “Any questions?”
Here’s my question.
I think our government is a tyranny right now. In 2000 the Supreme Court, split along ideological lines, decided a federal election before a needed recount could be completed and in which the state in question had gone to questionable practices (the state official in charge of the election process was state campaign manager for one of the candidates and the voter rolls had been culled almost entirely involving persons who would likely have voted against that official’s preferred candidate). I think that was a coup d’etat.
This new government (that of W) lied to the American people about supposed intelligence and took us into a pointless war that cost us $700 billion so far (and will have cost trillions when all is said and done) plus the lives of 4500 American service men and women and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead.
After 9-11 the government took to itself powers that violate the first, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth amendments to the Constitution. This includes invasive searches without warrant, denying American citizens and others due process of law, restricting protests to so-called Freedom Zones far from where the POTUS or his VOTUS were speaking, the Patriot Act (abridgment of many civil rights), the use of torture (forbidden by Washington, Lincoln and by our military traditions), and the imprisonment of more people than in any other nation in the world. W’s successor seems to have given up none of these powers despite being of the opposite party and supposedly a liberal.
I believe that our government is now a tyranny and that the electoral process has been so tarnished that we cannot expect matters to be fixed at the polls.
Does this mean I should take up arms against the government right now?
My answer is no. I am committed to nonviolence. I do not believe that violent rebellion will achieve anything other than a national bloodbath and I do not believe that a victory by rebels would likely bring anything except even worse and more explicit tyranny. I believe in the power of the people in this country to stand against oppressive government by nonviolent means. That will take longer but the end result will be far better.
There have been several examples in recent times. Most of the Warsaw Pact nations had nonviolent protest movements and the fall of the Communist regimes was without violence in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, the Baltic states, and the USSR itself. Of these only Russia has returned to dictatorship and the rest are functioning democracies. The Marcos regime in the Philippines was ousted by the nonviolent People Power movement after decades of communist insurgency had failed. A nonviolent is demonstrably better than armed revolt.
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