The point being made was that, in India, because Ghandi fought for justice, without violence, there was a sense that the point was to keep pressing, non-violently, towards justice. There was a notion raised that, if violent revolution makes things better, if things start to go bad, it’s time to have another violent revolution.

As you said, there is no “end”; there’s just the wheel turning over and over, and wherever you get by violence isn’t likely to be where you want to be… even if it’s what seems necessary (like “I’m still alive”).

I had an insight where I was pondering why and how injustice to a person far away “should” mean as much to me as an injustice done to me, and I realized that there shouldn’t be a difference… injustice should be painful and ugly. It’s not “injustice happened to (another)” or “injustice happened to me”, but “injustice occurred”.

By 1960 public lynchings were no longer popular, but in the South a white man could still murder a black man without having to worry much about being punished for it.

BTW, your reference to “the antebellum period” suggests you have no clue what went on between 1865 and 1960 regarding race relations. It was ugly.

And the civil rights movement only succeeded due to federal government sending in *troops* anyway!

Other than Little Rock 1957, I don’t remember [federal] troops being sent anywhere, yet that phase of the civil rights movement spanned the years 1955 (the Montgomery bus boycott) to 1968 (death of MLK). It is enormously ignorant of you to think none of that would have succeeded had troops not been sent to Little Rock in 1957.

When there were really no moral limits, in the 1850s, the issue of slavery was only settled by the *Civil War*.

As I said, sometimes you have to fight. But if you think the standard American white supremacist was substantially more “moral” in 1960 than he was in 1860, you are naive.

Maha:
>The blogger may be a graduate of the Michael Medved School of History; I don’t see many “moral limits” in the history of racial violence in America.

By the 1960s there were very substantial “moral limits”, compared to the antebellum period. And the civil rights movement only succeeded due to federal government sending in *troops* anyway!

When there were really no moral limits, in the 1850s, the issue of slavery was only settled by the *Civil War*.

Not a perfect counterargument there.

Nonviolence is powerful. But nonviolence *alone* has rarely succeeded (South Africa counts, I suppose; India doesn’t).

Perhaps the crucial balance is to retain legitimacy by *never* attacking anyone; *never* firiing first. The North bent over backwards to avoid starting the Civil War; the Allies made extreme efforts towards peace in World War II; these are probably the only reasons why those wars are still remembered as “just”.

After this *second* set of bloody massacres of nonviolent protestors, and indeed bystanders, by the Burmese Junta, a violent reaction would be considered legitimate by pretty much everyone. Previously it would not have been.

A small amount of violence may, in the end, be the only way to oust the junta. But violence will only work under very particular circumstances, which require that the junta be super-massively unpopular within Burma *and* either for the junta to lose its external (China, India) support, or for the democratic forces to have comparable external support. This situation cannot be created by violence and *can* be created by nonviolence.

There are no means, there are no ends. There are only actions and desires. An action is what it is – violence is violence, kindness is kindness.

Why are the failures of non-violent resistance always remembered, but the many failures of violent failure forgotten?

I believe it was Ho Chi Minh who stated that, “Gandhi’s non-violence would not have prevailed against the French.” The answer to that is moot, but it may explain why Ho is a hero to his people, while Gandhi is a hero to the world.

Gandhi himself complained that non-violence was always defined as the ‘absence’ of violence, when what he was doing was simply revolution by other means than violence.

The western notion of progress comes to us courtesy of science. After all, if you can plan for next year’s rice crop, why shouldn’t you plan for next year’s civilization? Which reminds me of the old joke: Q. What makes God laugh? A. Men making plans.

How long will it take human beings to realize that war is not a solution to anything. Afterall, human beings decided that throwing beautiful youths off cliffs did not solve the problems of droughts or floods. At one time, and not that long ago, an insult demanded a two-man face-off at dawn resulting in the death or severe injury of one or both participants. We’ve managed to outlaw human sacrifice and dueling as solutions to anything, surely war could reasonably follow.