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Vital Lessons Lost
Among the other important ideas apparently excluded from the modern educational canon is the nature, philosophy and history of non-violent civil disobedience. From the current perverted defense of Hamas, to the Floyd riots in 2020 and even to the annoying eco-loon practices of blocking traffic or disrupting art galleries, we are witnessing a dehumanized pseudo-morality that is evidence of dangerous cultural rot.
In stark contrast, the act of defiance of Rosa Parks was an almost perfect instance of civil disobedience. Ideally, this approach to injustice has several elements:
- Break only the unjust law. The dignity and rights of others, even oppressors, must be respected. Parks did not kick out a couple of bus windows or call the driver or the cops bad names on her way off the bus.
- You want to be put on trial (see, e.g., Gandhi’s statement to the court demanding to be found guilty) because
- You want to force the real jury (the wider community or the nation) to choose between a bad law and a clearly righteous person because
- You have put yourself at risk to express your confidence in the basic decency of other people, even those who have hated you. It is a statement of respect and a wildly optimistic confidence in the goodness of others in an attempt not merely to forgive but to elevate those who have tacitly permitted injustice.
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s incorporated the idea that one cannot obtain justice by committing injustice and that a large-scale appeal to conscience was both the most effective and the rightful method to achieve racial justice, an invitation to be righteous rather than a demand. That movement was greatly successful on those terms and the whole country was better for it.
Catholics in Northern Ireland tried to emulate that in 1972 but the murder of 14 marchers and horrific police violence (“Bloody Sunday”) ended optimism, sparked the rise of the Provos, and forced the UK to end local Stormont rule. Similarly, the murder of MLK triggered violence and a loss of hope in non-violent appeals to conscience. (Even Rosa Parks gravitated toward the Black Power movement).
The loss of hope in the fundamental decency and humanity of other people means that agreement, compromise, and a mutual commitment to justice become difficult or impossible. Therefore, normal democratic processes and institutions are, at best, suspect because they fail to silence and negate The Other.
We see the extraordinarily complex scientific, economic, and legal issues around fossil fuels reduced to hating “climate deniers.” Race is to be defined as a permanent, immutable state of injustice with fixed roles. In the five minutes since a transgender “identity” was invented, it is already a matter of The Other trying to “erase” victims. There is no dialog, only accusations, and grabs for destructive power.
The fading culture of the First Amendment presumes that people ultimately have an affinity for truth and that the best path to truth is through discussion and reason. In that culture, having an opinion that you believe to be correct creates a duty to persuade others, not a duty for others to unquestioningly and immediately accept. And, perhaps most importantly, disagreement, however significant or heated, never justifies violating the rights and dignity of others.
BLM, ANTIFA, campus Hamas fanboys, eco-loons, and militant advocates of sexual deviance all reject dialog in favor of destructive power. More than just defective forms of activism, this is also symptomatic of a complete disconnect from a culture of objective truth, mutual respect, humility, and acceptance of all the shared moral and ethical requirements needed to preserve and protect human dignity for all. Worse, people who choose to become monsters undermine the requisite faith in the fundamental decency and shared humanity of others, without which, we are all in danger of becoming monsters.
Published in Religion and Philosophy
Great post.
Amen.
The elite hold us in such disdain that the qualities you mention are probably seen as weaknesses of the rest of us. Human dignity? Humility? Not in their lexicon.
When I was an ROTC cadet at Syracuse U (79-82) there was a graduate program in Non-Violent Studies. Their office was across an alleyway from the ROTC program and they placed a huge sign in their window stating “Non-Violent Studies Program”. Someone placed a sign in the ROTC window that said ”Violent Studies Program”.
In their defense, one of the grad students came and did a pretty good seminar with us on their program.
Quibble: “They” consider those activities to be in the “non-violent” category. After all, the Boston Tea Party destroyed private property so what makes somebody’s else’s tea any different from somebody else’s painting, and Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi also blocked traffic and they are considered secular saints.
(One counter-argument could be that the Boston Tea Party (arguably) induced a violent military response from the British in a way that genuine non-violent resistance might not have.)
It makes total sense for Officers-In-Training to study non-violent resistance programs so they can invent better strategies and tactics for crushing them.
;-)
One of the problems with “non-violent resistance” type tactics is that they’re not going to be very effective unless it’s dealing with someone/something that is also already pretty non-violent. That’s one reason I’m not terribly impressed with Ghandhi for example. He didn’t have to worry much about getting run over by tanks the way the Chinese protesters were at Tiananmen Square.
One of the principles of “civil disobedience ” that is missing lately is the realization that there are consequences. People involved with it in the past knew they were probably going to jail etc. The modern-day variety think they should be able to glue themselves to historic works of art etc, or even loot and burn down businesses etc, and face no consequences whatsoever.
The Qissa Kwani incident notwithstanding?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qissa_Khwani_massacre
Wow, is that well said!
Invitations are extended to one’s equals. Demands are issued to one’s inferiors. And we can see everyday that the American Left is getting less and less careful about concealing the fact they view the rest of us as their inferiors.
Right. Gandhi’s shtick would have gone nowhere with any of the actually repressive empires. He’d be dead and nobody would have heard of him. The best he could have hoped for was decades of imprisonment and a popular following for his samizdat. Solzhenitsyn was a far better man.
What a great idea. It’s exactly what our Founding Fathers did, isn’t it?
Well, with rifles and cannon.
Not sure which directions this snark is intaking or exhausting. Is classical civil disobedience (non-violent, intend to be caught, accept punishment) an unworthy intermediate on the way from tranquility to warfare?
There are many, many additional reasons not to be:
https://archive.org/details/richard-grenier-the-gandhi-nobody-knows-1983-thomas-nelson-publishers_202012/mode/2up