>only peaceful non-violent struggle can bring about real change.
Utterly false, but persistently preached by those in power to ensure there's never any real threat to their position. "Just lie down while I stomp your neck. Don't resist. We'll discuss your objections later, at a more convenient time."
All political power emanates from the barrel of a gun. All civil power emanates from the people's latent threat to revolt and string up the members of an oppressive regime from lantern poles. The Founding Fathers understood that more than anything else. The First Amendment is worthless without the Second Amendment.
Violence should never be the first (or even second) answer, but it is the ultimate answer, and should never be excluded on principle.
The non-violent protest thing seems like a myth that needs to be taken out back and shot, violently. We've seen for decades what they accomplish - absolutely nothing.
Was the Civil Rights movement in the United States violent or non-violent?
MLK may have been the face of it, but the man that really brought the government to the negotiating table was Malcolm X... Because of the implicit threat that if non-violent resistance won't work, here's a guy that is perfectly happy to have his supporters sit outside congress, armed with assault rifles, exercising their second amendment rights.
Non-violent protest often wins because the powers that be want to avoid antagonising the violent arm of the movement.
It should also be pointed out that while MLK wasn't interested in engaging in violence himself, he had rather harsh words for people who cared more about non-violence than civil rights (see: Letter from a Birmingham Jail).
> Non-violent protest often wins because the powers that be want to avoid antagonising the violent arm of the movement.
Not really a non-violent protest wins because majority move away from a violent group to a non-violent group.
So it makes a violent person who already has fear, more scared of being left alone. Non-violent protests need to be planned and require strategy in such a way, it helps those non-violent protestors to self-defend with the use of non-violent means, i.e. using deterrents which create fear in aggressors mind on use of violence.
That might just mean that violent protests are deployed too widely. It's impossible to say in unique situations whether violence or nonviolence will fare better.
> Utterly false, but persistently preached by those in power to ensure there's never any real threat to their position. "Just lie down while I stomp your neck. Don't resist. We'll discuss your objections later, at a more convenient time."
The post you responded to did not say "don't resist". It said "don't use violence".
Peaceful protest has some track record of bringing down systems, ending regimes, and enacting lasting change. Violent protest has a worse track record; it mainly alienates the man on the street and it cannot build consensus.
War can bring about lasting change, but only if your side wins. The difference between war and violent protest is that war implies two sides, each of which has a strong consensus. Violent protest only implies factions. Eliding this difference is a mistake.
This is not to say that violence is unjustified, just that violent protests almost never enact lasting change (because they do not create consensus).
> All political power emanates from the barrel of a gun
All political power emanates from consensus. Violence and coercion can only replace consensus for short periods of time. Consensus can be established and maintained through propaganda and brainwashing - which is frightening and complicates the picture.
If Mao was right then there would be no difference between a gunman and a police officer with a gun. Of course there is every difference in the world between those two figures, a fact proven by how differently we react to them.
> All civil power emanates from the people's latent threat to revolt and string up the members of an oppressive regime from lantern poles. The Founding Fathers understood that more than anything else. The First Amendment is worthless without the Second Amendment.
I agree: sovereignty is defined by the ability to make exceptions. Citizens are only sovereign insofar as they can choose to remove themselves from their obligation to their nation.
My sense is that peaceful protests are the best way to bring about lasting change in China. What the anti-PRC groups need to do is build consensus. Once they've done that, if change does not follow, then war is on the table. But until consensus exists, I believe that violence will fail spectacularly.
> Utterly false, but persistently preached by those in power
A non-violent protestor is a person who does not fear anything, and the person who doesn't fear is the most powerful one.
Violence is a result of fear, that's the reason need to use weapons and aids to fight back to increase the chances of survival. A true warrior is a fearless person who respond to violence with non-violence and make violent person ashamed of themselves.
It's very easy to fight violently, every animal do it including us. We are at least evolved to tame our violent urges and that's what makes us a human.
> All political power emanates from barrel of gun
This is the famous quote of Mao Zedong (毛泽东). "Power flows from the barrel of gun"
You might believe in it like every violent protestor. I don't. I believe power flows from the depth of heart and mind based on our connection with universe, nature and our endeavor to keep it balanced without resorting to violence.
> Second amendment
It's not a sacred thing, there are many places in this world way more safe and peaceful without the second amendment.
Violence is a means to enforce ones will on another. It is only one of such means. It is the mean by which the entire legal system falls back on. It is the mean by which Americans won their independence. It is the mean by which bad people do evil things.
>This is the famous quote of Mao Zedong (毛泽东). "Power flows from the barrel of gun"
And it is the truth, especially if we see take this to be an analogy for strength (before guns, it was swords, before swords it was sticks, before sticks it was fists, these days it might not be guns at the national level, and one day it may be something else entirely).
>It's not a sacred thing, there are many places in this world way more safe and peaceful without the second amendment.
Generally with the backing (perhaps unwillingly) of the nation that has the second amendment, and even those places still use guns to enforce their will on those who do not play along. The smarter areas use it as a last resort and not the first response, but they still use it.
I understand and agree with what you're saying, but your points about the American Revolution and the Second Amendment could potentially be interpreted as permitting violence from protestors.
The US Revolution truly began forming after British soldiers started gunning down colonial civilians. For example:
>"John Adams wrote that the "foundation of American independence was laid" on [the date of the massacre], and Samuel Adams and other Patriots used annual commemorations (Massacre Day) to encourage public sentiment toward independence.
The colonists didn't just shoot the evil British tyrants telling them to go away because of their oppressive policies. They probably would have lost the war if that's how it started. That's not how you start a revolution. It started because the British fired the first unfair shots (or at least that was the perception).
Some protestors have been quoted saying they want a protestor, or a police officer, to die and become a martyr for either side so that a true revolution can begin. While the citizens of Hong Kong absolutely deserve democracy and civil rights, wishing death is not the way to do it. If the government does start the violence towards civilians of their own accord, with cruelty and brutality, perhaps reciprocal violence in self-defense may at some point become justifiable, but this is a very fine line and only a hypothetical scenario to be considered in response to grave danger, not something anyone should ever wish for.
“A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”
Well, you know. You expect the violent person to be ashamed of themselves. That's a very bold assumption. A psychopath or sociopath won't feel a thing when they order their army to mow down peaceful protestors.
It's a beautiful idea really. But when you are given no option other than to fight, do you think it's wrong for them to do so? Jewish, Armenians, Chinese under Japanese occupation? Might have not mattered, might have. I guess it depends on the person. An exaggeration of course compared to the issue at hand, but it seems wishful idealism. In some cases, yes, it works. But when your adversary doesn't care, it's quite ineffective. Game-theory wise I think equal repercussion works quite well, where violence is met with violence in order to prevent it from happening. Sure not always, but if there is no punishment it's simply much too advantageous to use violence if it solves the problem.
I mean school bullies probably won't stop unless you hit them or they get some sort of punishment. Sure you'll feel probably mighty wise if you don't resort to violence or any kind of resistance, but it's unhelpful if it doesn't stop it. And in the meantime you'll be suffering tremendously.
I'm not disagreeing that in this case non-violent approach isn't the best. But depending on the setting, the parameters if you will, that approach might be inefficient. Another example would be the people living under the Stalin's rule in Soviet Union. Even if you resisted peacefully, I'm sure you would have been taken to the gulag either way.
The circumstance where non-violent behavior works is very specific and is best when there's:
A) much stronger opponent (British Empire, Chinese government)
B) level of civilization where both parties do not want to engage in violence (the majority of modern civilizations)
C) good chance for massive unrest if violence were to happen (no ruler wants to deal with domestic terrorism and internal squabbles, unless of course your regime is breaking up already and that's the only way to keep control)
The more primal the opponent, the worse are your chances. Aztecs would have welcomed non-violent behavior with open hands, they would have cheerfully enslaved people who didn't put up a fight. The reason why they stopped was basically the destruction of their civilization by the Spaniards. But maybe I'm mixing here war with protesting, which is a more of problem after you have lost and are under the oppressive regime. Then your options are limited: it's either violent insurgency or non-violent protesting. In modern world luckily we have electronic mass-media that helps immensely with the non-violence.
I get what you're saying and share your idealism. But you've been the beneficiary of many, many guns. And much violence. So while you may sound good, it's not based in reality.
Regardless, violence is relatively at a historically all-time low[1].
But to just speak of violent protestors, while ignoring the triads and people with odd markings doing odd things, the police brutality, and things like this, is also not even close to a complete picture: https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/cv9y4c/protesters...
> A true warrior is a fearless person who respond to violence with non-violence and make violent person ashamed of themselves.
You cannot make a person have empathy, you can appeal to it, where it exists. Otherwise, you have to defeat them. Not "crush" them, but disarm them and establish boundaries. Without military defeat of Nazi Germany, anything like reflection or reconciliation wasn't even thinkable. As a matter of fact, without their military defeat, we wouldn't know most of what we know about their atrocities today, they were set to purge all evidence as thoroughly as they had exterminated people.
Factual reality, which is at stake, is something even more important than peace -- in the same way atoms are more important than water or orange juice, without atoms, you can't have either. Peace can always erupt again, but destroyed facts remain destroyed, and that being done well enough, can make genuine peace impossbile. A static state of submission is not peace, peace without truthfulness is not peace, and low-intensity people getting disappeared, not asking what happened to your neighbour, is not peace.
ignorance
doesn't hurt anybody
with the exception of those
who can be hurt
because nobody knows about it
-- Erich Fried, "Vorteile der Unwissenheit (in allen Ländern der Hochsicherheit)", or "Benefits of ignorance (in all high security nations)"
A revolution is round :-) Of course one can't generalise at all, but very frequently quick change results in replacing one system with another that resembles the first one an awful lot. Real, long lasting change requires a long time to influence culture and to wait until the time is right to move.
However, I will also agree that usually violence is involved, even if one side doesn't participate. Gandhi referred to the people who participated in non-violent protests as soldiers because he knew that many would die.
I don't think violence is the ultimate answer. The ultimate answer is the answer that works. There are many paths to the same location. It's probably best to review your options before you decide which ones to exclude.
That's actually a perfect example of a revolution resulting in a system that looks a lot like the previous system.
Mostly self-governing colonies with Parliament exercising some limited control over them turn into mostly self-governing states with a Federal government exercising some limited control over them.
Pretty much the only things that changed short-term were foreign policy and what kinds of imported goods were taxed.
The American Revolution was won by leveraging Iroquois-style confederacy [1] as effective propaganda [2], and by employing guerilla warfare tactics learned fighting the Algonquin. This enabled securing enough victory (i.e. Saratoga) to get the French involved as the focus shifted to the Southern theater.
It was the first successful war of independence [3], lead to establishing the modern elected head of state, outlawed explicit nobility, and inspired fanatical devotion to an earthly cause.
For the previous hundred years, Jacobite rebellions in Europe had been crushed, seemingly due mainly to tactical failure (e.g. Culloden, the last pitched battle in Britain).
But then, a few years after the American Revolution, the French: guerilla warfare, beheaded head of state, banished nobility, fanatical devotion to an earthly cause.
(Interestingly, the French Revolution occurred right around the time they hit 50% literacy [4], increasing the viability of written propaganda.)
Then Haiti launched the second successful independence war in 1791, kicking off centuries of decolonization.
The American Revolution was a break from history.
We haven't cycled back to pitched battles, if anything guerilla warfare is still under active development and experiencing significant growth. Propaganda, as an instrument of war, is only becoming more important. And colonial aggressors continue to lose when on someone else's home field.
> The First Amendment is worthless without the Second Amendment.
The 2nd Amendment was never (and still isn't) meant to ensure the right of people to violently resist or overthrow the government. The way to influence the US government is to become involved in the process, not (threaten to) shoot people. If that's ever not the case, you don't have a country, you have a failed state.
It is simply a fact that the Second Amendment was meant to preserve the people's right to overthrow the government (or, at least, to defend themselves against the government). Madison famously wrote that state militias would keep a federal army in check.
It's a persistent myth that this is not the case. The US was born in revolution and the founders were very concerned about the possibility of a tyrannical government.
Even if it wasn't explicitly stated, the Second Amendment was written by people who had just used militias as a big part of their force to overthrow the government. They weren't senile. They hadn't forgotten. They knew what they were saying.
> It is simply a fact that the Second Amendment was meant to preserve the people's right to overthrow the government (or, at least, to defend themselves against the government).
Nah, this is totally wrong. The Constitution explicitly gives Congress power over state militias to suppress insurrections:
"The Congress shall have Power To... provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions" [1]
Further, the Militia Act of 1792 allows the president to take control of State militias, and this was famously used by George Washington himself to quell the Whiskey Rebellion.
> Madison famously wrote that state militias would keep a federal army in check.
He did, yes, but he was talking about States vs. the Federal government. He also later saw how bad militias were at being an army (a point Washington argued over and over again) in the War of 1812 and changed his position in favor of a strong, standing, Federal army. And FWIW, we put the question of States keeping the Federal government in check to bed in the Civil War.
The right to bear arms arrived to the United States via English common law. It existed in English common law for the purpose of self-defense, resistance against oppression, and to assist the defense of the realm.
Whether or not Madison (or Washington or whoever) changed his mind at some point does not change the fact that this is the purpose of the Second Amendment. No other laws (like the ones you cited) change this fact, nor does the Civil War.
You can argue that this interpretation is obsolete, but it's the interpretation that was predominant when the Constitution was ratified. Denying that is ahistorical.
I'm sure many people interpreted it that way, but they're also wrong, and they evidently didn't write either the Constitution or the Militia Act, or 2A. And I guess when I refer to intent, I mean those authors.
Militias were explicitly under the control of both Congress and the president, by law and the Constitution. And militias were used to quell rebellion, not to serve it. These are facts. I understand they're counter to your and others' interpretations, but that doesn't make them any less factual.
And when you consider:
- 2A only applied to militias
- Any "security from tyranny" was States being free from Federal tyranny
- the Civil War erased any doubt about the States rebelling against the Federal government
- The last Militia Act in 1909 made militias into the _National_ Guard
then you have to concede 2A is just a relic from a time when the US had neither the resources nor the political will to create and maintain a standing army.
Well, sadly, it's of course violence. The basic contract of government is you give up some liberty for safety (Hobbes), i.e. you don't go around robbing people, and the government will see that no one else goes around robbing you. But this sort of first form of government was inflexible, and if you wanted to change it you basically had to kill the people in charge. The chief innovation of liberal government was "self governance", and the trade there was "OK, we'll listen to you, you don't have to murder us to effect change". Practically everyone does this via some form of voting.
But as soon as that contract breaks down, i.e. the government stops listening to you, then that contract is breached and generally trouble starts. It gets (arguably) even worse if the government falls entirely, because then you get the kind of lawless marauding you had before any government.
I mean, I guess the argument here is "well, if the gov't goes crazy we still have weapons because 2A let us amass them". But in reality, the US government is unimaginably powerful. Like they could easily take control of all energy producing facilities everywhere, every major city, port, road, railroad, airport, hospital, etc. There are probably close to a million law enforcement officials in the US. And all that's to say nothing of advanced military, surveillance, and espionage capability.
Basically, the idea that 2A would let us protect any semblance of our current way if life is fantasy. The most you could hope for is to join a resistance and dig in for a generations long, probably species destroying authoritarian regime to run its course.
If you go out and start shooting people you are quickly going to end up with the reputation of a school shooter, as opposed to, say, George Washington. Most people prefer peace and safety over any particular ideology, and they will turn against anyone who throws away the former to achieve their particular version of the latter.
Utterly false, but persistently preached by those in power to ensure there's never any real threat to their position. "Just lie down while I stomp your neck. Don't resist. We'll discuss your objections later, at a more convenient time."
All political power emanates from the barrel of a gun. All civil power emanates from the people's latent threat to revolt and string up the members of an oppressive regime from lantern poles. The Founding Fathers understood that more than anything else. The First Amendment is worthless without the Second Amendment.
Violence should never be the first (or even second) answer, but it is the ultimate answer, and should never be excluded on principle.