A civil disobedience movement depends not on the goodness of the enemy but on the mental strength of the participants.
peter_griffin on December 29, 2012 at 8:48 PM

What a load. It requires both to succeed.
I don’t care how ‘mentally strong’ you are, if the rulers and their enforcers don’t mind slaughtering you, your civil disobedience will end badly for you.

blink on December 29, 2012 at 11:22 AM

“Taking down”? This was a disappointing comment – given that you view such an important issue as a playing ground to score points. Regardless, I will humor you for a minute and point out that, having the British start a commission to study atrocities in colonized India is not very different from Obama creating a czar to figure out the negative effect of some regulations. If you believe otherwise, I do have a nice shiny new bridge to sell you at a very decent price.

A civil disobedience movement depends not on the goodness of the enemy but on the mental strength of the participants. Please read a bit and be informed about the philosophy and implementation before starting another debate based off of inaccurate assumptions.

the naiveté is all on your part I think.

sharrukin on December 28, 2012 at 6:55 PM

Ha! I read through most of this page. Excellent job taking down peter_griffin.

Where did anyone say that? I may have missed it – please provide a link.

peter_griffin on December 28, 2012 at 5:29 PM

http://twitchy.com/2012/12/16/amid-increasing-death-threats-nra-braces-for-d-c-anti-gun-march-led-by-left-wing-credo-mobile/

Did not Ayers, Obama’s friend write about murdering people to change the “system?”

The naivete of this comment is breathtaking. Please try educating yourself on the atrocities of the British in India to the founders of the Civil Disobedience movement (an example can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh).

The philosophy of civil disobedience does not rest on the fact that its easy, nor on the fact that it assumes the high mindedness of its opponents. In fact, the premise of civil disobedience is to have a unified opposition to the tyranny by refusing to help them in their motives in any form. That motive may be a profit motive, which was evident in the case of the British – since the movement took the wind out of their commercial ambitions in India. As soon as the main incentive for the tyrannical power to stay put disappears, they lose their followers, and the regime crumples.

What you need to keep in mind is that a tyrannical regime is not like the evil joker in the Dark Knight, it is very much a profit centric structure whose members are there for a certain perverse incentive. The moment you take away that incentive, the greedy followers are peeled away, heralding the destruction of the despots.

peter_griffin on December 28, 2012 at 6:27 PM

Naïveté? Really? As bad as the sins of the Brits were, one must view things in context. They decolonized w/out much of a fight when compared to other great powers throughout history. How would have Gandhi done if he had used his peaceful strategy in China, USSR or most other authoritarian regimes? Prison or dead is the answer. Gandhi saw the writing on the wall and did a smart thing. Sun Tzu would be proud.

In the 20s and 30s, British opinion was turning against colonialism. The dye was cast. One could say that Gandhi was pissing with the wind, not against it, which is usually the case when dealing with repressive governments.

you go conquer a tank with a viola.
sesquipedalian on December 28, 2012 at 4:42 PM

Was quoting Kelly Bundy.
.
.
Who is brilliant compared to you.

The naivete of this comment is breathtaking. Please try educating yourself on the atrocities of the British in India to the founders of the Civil Disobedience movement (an example can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh).

A Committee of Inquiry, chaired by Lord Hunter, was established to investigate the massacre. The committee’s report condemned Dyer, arguing that in “continuing firing as long as he did, it appears to us that General Dyer committed a grave error.” Dissenting members argued that the martial law regime’s use of force was wholly unjustified.

He was met by Lieutenant-General Sir Havelock Hudson, who told him that he was relieved of his command. He was told later by the Commander-in-Chief in India, General Sir Charles Monro, to resign his post and that he would not be reemployed.

Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War at the time of the debate in the House of Commons, called it “an episode without precedent or parallel in the modern history of the British Empire… an extraordinary event, a monstrous event, an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation… the crowd was neither armed nor attacking.”

Herbert Asquith observed: “There has never been such an incident in the whole annals of Anglo-Indian history nor I believe in the history of our empire since its very inception down to present day. It is one of the worst outrages in the whole of our history.”

Could you point me to the court of inquiry following the Babi Yar massacre…or any of the hundreds of similar mass killings carried out by the Nazi’s?

NO? Then the naiveté is all on your part I think.

Civil disobedience meant nothing to the Nazi’s beyond being a useful feature when they were killing them.

The philosophy of civil disobedience does not rest on the fact that its easy, nor on the fact that it assumes the high mindedness of its opponents.

Yes, actually it does. It has failed every time it has been tried when faced with the real deal. Tyrants don’t care. The British and Americans had no wish to engage in mass killings and that is why it worked.

What you need to keep in mind is that a tyrannical regime is not like the evil joker in the Dark Knight, it is very much a profit centric structure whose members are there for a certain perverse incentive. The moment you take away that incentive, the greedy followers are peeled away, heralding the destruction of the despots.

peter_griffin on December 28, 2012 at 6:27 PM

There was no profit in exterminating Jews. It would have been far more profitable to let them live, and yet even at the end when the Allied armies were advancing into Germany they were rushing to kill the last batches of Gypsies, Slavs and Jews. Trains that could have carried military supplies, troops, or German refugees, were used instead to send people to the death camps.

You do not understand evil.

The British in India or the American Republic are examples of states that would not take the steps needed to crush such movements.

sharrukin on December 28, 2012 at 5:57 PM

The naivete of this comment is breathtaking. Please try educating yourself on the atrocities of the British in India to the founders of the Civil Disobedience movement (an example can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh).

The philosophy of civil disobedience does not rest on the fact that its easy, nor on the fact that it assumes the high mindedness of its opponents. In fact, the premise of civil disobedience is to have a unified opposition to the tyranny by refusing to help them in their motives in any form. That motive may be a profit motive, which was evident in the case of the British – since the movement took the wind out of their commercial ambitions in India. As soon as the main incentive for the tyrannical power to stay put disappears, they lose their followers, and the regime crumples.

What you need to keep in mind is that a tyrannical regime is not like the evil joker in the Dark Knight, it is very much a profit centric structure whose members are there for a certain perverse incentive. The moment you take away that incentive, the greedy followers are peeled away, heralding the destruction of the despots.

Again, you compare apples to oranges. For one, the situation in Afghanistan is the way it is because we overstayed our mandate to the point where our mere presence has the effect of ticking off the local populace. Anytime you have a *popular* resistance, arms or no arms, there will be an impact.

A part of this conversation bothers me though – because it is along the lines of “end justifies the means” philosophy, which I know a lot of folks here stridently oppose. To use violence to create a social change is something that has happened way more in socialist states, if history is any guide.

peter_griffin on December 28, 2012 at 5:37 PM

I’m talking about the effectiveness of guerrilla small arm actions against big, bad, legit armed forces. If tyranny comes here in the future, we can do the same. Apple to apples.

And it’s an anomaly I’m committed to keeping around to confound all the statists!

GWB on December 28, 2012 at 4:46 PM

I’m with you brother!

If arms are all that are needed to create a revolution, look no further than Gandhi or MLK. A civil disobedience movement requires no guns, no threat of violence, just a completely unified citizenry in a morally just fight against a tyrannical government will win. Unity, as you see, is the key here.

peter_griffin on December 28, 2012 at 5:28 PM

Out of the tens of thousands of uprisings, name me some more where the revolutionaries were unarmed………………………..

Yeah, relying on anomalies doesn’t make sense.