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Post 0

Friday, October 14 - 6:25pm

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In the thread, Peace Lovin' Hippie Crap, Sarah House wrote in #18: Remember the American Revolution? Wouldn't it have been so much more awesome if it had been done without bloodshed? I think so.

One of the things I learned in a pretty good high school history class is that the revolution took place in the minds of the people at about 1765 and the war for independence was fought as a result of that.

I know what Sarah meant. I do not disagree with that sentiment. I only use it as a springboard to other ideas in support of that sentiment.

There are libertarians who argue that the American colonists could have won their independence without Washington and his generals and their armies. Guerrilla warfare would have worn the British down. Others disagree and point out that only a complete military defeat of Cornwallis by an army he could perceive and understand led to the Treaty of Paris.
Personally, I am of the guerrilla persuasion. More, rather than fight at all, I think the colonists should have done many other things to achieve the same result. In the Peace Lovin' Hippie Crap thread, I cited the PBS documentary, A FORCE MORE POWERFUL: A CENTURY OF NONVIOLENT CONFLICT.
http://www.pbs.org/weta/forcemorepowerful/

This is not really a new idea. When the Ionian Revolt failed, the Ionians just snuck away in the middle of the night. The people of Akragas on Sicily did the same thing when they were surrounded by Carthagians.

So, given that the real revolution took place in the minds of the people, then what?

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 10/14, 6:26pm)

Post 1

Friday, October 14 - 9:26pm

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You're deamin' Marotta.

It so reminds me of a book I read......

Construction Supervisor: Come off it, Mr. Dent -- you can't win, you know. You can't lie in front of the bulldozers indefinitely.

Arthur Dent: I'm game. We'll see who rusts first!

[...]

Construction Supervisor: Hello? Yes? Has Mr. Dent come to his senses yet?

Ford Prefect: Can we, for the moment, assume he hasn't?

Construction Supervisor: Well?

Ford Prefect: Can we also assume that he's going to be staying there all day?

Construction Supervisor: So?

Ford Prefect: So all your men are going to be standing around here all day, doing nothing.

Construction Supervisor: Could be, could be ...

Ford Prefect:Well, if you're resigned to that, you don't actually need him to lie there all the time, do you?

Construction Supervisor: Not as such, no. Not exactly "need" ...

Ford Prefect: Well, if you'd just like to take it that he's actually there, then he and I could slip off down the pub for half an hour. How does that sound?

Construction Supervisor: Sounds perfectly reasonable ... I suppose.

Ford Prefect: And if you'd like to pop off for a quick one yourself later on, we can always cover for you in return.

Construction Supervisor: Thanks. That you very much. That's very kind.

Post 2

Friday, October 14 - 9:54pm

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You can't get it done. People are too....earthly.

So, given that the real revolution took place in the minds of the people, then what?

Then you need to spill some blood to seal the deal.

Old monuments have to be torn down, new monuments have to be raised. Portraits, statues and commemorative coins! There needs to be rhetoric and a sound track (that 'Internationalie' thingie? Marseillaise?), there needs to be action, participation. Tangibles! Pagentry, vocalisation, souvaneir T-shirts and coffee mugs, memorials, dopamine, heroes, anecdotes, villains, victims, adrenaline!

We need a big wop of ceremony, rice throwing and dressing up and eating and drinking and traveling and accommodation and speeches and toasts and church and reception and photo shoots, bucks parties, something borrowed and something blue and wedding rings. Got to have symbolism and action! And that's not even for a revolution, that's for a marriage!

There was no way to decapitate the Divine Right Of Kings in 1649 without also killing King Charles (Penn and Teller just aren't that good, even today).

There's no help for it. I mean, look at what happened to Arthur Dent.

Post 3

Saturday, October 15 - 3:30am

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Rick Giles wrote:
Then you need to spill some blood to seal the deal.

I nominate you to die for the rest of us.

If it would bring freedom to everyone else, would you commit suicide -- and kill the people you love most in the process.

How about if instead of killing you, we just cut off your legs and put out an eye? Is that worth the sacrifice?

We'll even build a monument.

What if it were up to me? I push this Magic Button and we are living in an L. Neil Smith utopia, but Rick Giles is dead? Hmmmm....

Maybe we should vote on it! All in favor of throwing Rick Giles into the volcano to ensure a good crop of fish, raise your spears!

You see, there is this ontological problem that keeps getting in the way...

Post 4

Saturday, October 15 - 6:30am

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Oh I don't know - if that's the price to live in an L. Neil Smith world.............:-)

Post 5

Saturday, October 15 - 8:40am

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Michael,
How much of the blood of the "peaceful protestors" are you willing to spill to get the "bloodless revolution" you want? How many of Gandhi's followers were brutalized in his "peaceful" demonstrations? Everything you asked in post #3 can be asked of you.

If it would bring freedom to everyone else, would you commit suicide -- and kill the people you love most in the process.

So, in order to bring about your peaceful revolution, would you?
Thanks,
Glenn

Post 6

Saturday, October 15 - 9:16am

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Why is peaceful still being associated with passive? What about preventing them from harming you, yet still not harming them?

Sarah

Post 7

Saturday, October 15 - 9:37am

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Sarah,
Michael referred us to a PBS documentary in which, amongst others, Gandhi was the model. But, Gandhi called his method "passive resistance", not "peaceful resistance". And it's not just a semantic difference.
Glenn

Post 8

Saturday, October 15 - 10:01am

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Glenn,

You asked Michael:

So, in order to bring about your peaceful revolution, would you?

Unless you accidentally left off the quotes, this seems to be equating "peaceful," i.e. passive, with peaceful. Also in the documentary, as he pointed out in the dissent thread, was a case of peaceful resistance against a Nazi occupation, which included subterfuge.

Sarah

Post 9

Saturday, October 15 - 11:00am

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Glenn Fletcher asked: "So, in order to bring about your peaceful revolution, would you?"

No, I would not.

I fail to understand how Objectivists who think that a "little bit" of taxation or government regulation is monsterously somehow endorse killing and dying.

We are not going to fall into the intrinsicist fallacy exploded by Objectivism and claim that taxation is intrinsically evil, are we? Oh...

Well, I think that killing and dying are intrinsically bad. I think that if more people avoided them, the world would be a better place.

The existence of black and white allow gray. In fact, a full color chart demonstrates a full two dimensional array of grays. The PBS theory of Denmark and India are just some ways to deal with oppression. I mentioned the Ionian Revolt and the exodus from Samos. We do not think much of Luxembourg. Declared neutral in two world wars, they were occupied four times, twice each by the Germans and the Allies. Yet, the land of Luxembourg and the Letzens themselves seem none the worse for it.

Post 10

Saturday, October 15 - 11:04am

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Well - if taxation is theft, doesn't that make it... intrinsically evil?

Post 11

Saturday, October 15 - 4:01pm

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Psycho-epistemology's a bitch eh?

You see, there is this ontological problem that keeps getting in the way...

Throwing people in the volcano, exchanging wedding rings, sending a meal of youths to Crete, trial by combat, consumation by sex, consumation by mutual slaughter...etc etc..nothing to do with ontology. It's just tokenism. Humans need satisfaction on both levels- they need a course of action that will work and they need a course of action they can actually believe in.
For a businessman or politician there needs to be a special suit, special shoes and other convincing trappings and conspicuous baubles for them to be taken seriously- 'quite' apart from any actual ability they might have. For a doctor, a certain manner and the ritual of making you wait and having sacred parchments on his wall with big red seals is enough to put people at ease (or their absence, at least, would trouble us) 'quite' without regard for any actual ability they might have. Education != qualification, you see?

And then there's the handshake. What ontological power is in a handshake? None. It's just more tokenism to symbolise a great range of very real but subliminal psycho-epistemological necessities. Eg A Dutch Minister recently cancelled a meeting with Muslim leaders who refused to shake her hand because she was a woman. Nothing ontological about such gestures, or the absence thereof, but there is a huge power of PE that cannot be rightly ignored.

I nominate you to die for the rest of us.

That's one of the many reasons why you don't get to be my family doctor....

How about if instead of killing you, we just cut off your legs and put out an eye? Is that worth the sacrifice?

"For us, the Great War is finito. A war that would be a damn sight simpler if we'd just stayed in England and shot fifty thousand of our men a week. No more mud, death, rats, bombs, shrapnel, whizz-bangs, barbed wire and those bloody awful songs that have the word `whoops' in the title." - Blackadder

Ontologically, Edmund, you are correct.

Post 12

Saturday, October 15 - 4:18pm

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BTW Robert Malcom, you are so off my Christmas Cards List now.

--
Oh I don't know - if that's the price to live in an L. Neil Smith world.............:-)

Post 13

Saturday, October 15 - 4:36pm

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Is ok - didn't want coal for xmas anyway... no furnace... :-)

Post 14

Saturday, October 15 - 6:33pm

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Rick Giles hit the nail on the head: "Throwing people in the volcano, exchanging wedding rings, ... a special suit, special shoes and other convincing trappings... sacred parchments on his wall with big red seals ... Muslim leaders who refused to shake her hand because she was a woman."

Gene Roddenberry probably did as much to liberate our thinking as did Ayn Rand. How many episodes of Star Trek does it take to get you to see that the primitive rituals are primitive rituals? They are not logical and have no place in a discussion.

The Dutch minister was just as primitive and illogical as the Muslim leaders. I would have met with them. Captain Kirk would have. Captain Picard would have. Captain Janeway would have. They would get a place at the bar at Quark's before and after their interview with Commander Sisko.

Quoting Blackadder, Rick offered this: A war that would be a damn sight simpler if we'd just stayed in England and shot fifty thousand of our men a week.

Well, there was an old Star Trek about that, too. Each side just computed the theoretical hit and the appropriate number of people reported to chambers for killing. Captain Kirk put a stop to it, and, I think, without punching anyone's lights out. It was wrong. That is the word for it: wrong. War is wrong.

Robert Malcom asked: Well - if taxation is theft, doesn't that make it... intrinsically evil?

Yeah, I don't know, Robert. To me, it is. But you would have to ask someone more Objectivist than I, someone who lectures at the Ayn Rand Institute or writes for the Journal of Objectivist Studies, perhaps. If I understand -- and, hey, I am so fallible -- what some people here claim, then, the standard is your own life qua happiness and you must ask yourself, not "Is this wrong?" -- but "Does this feel good?" and continue the introspection until you understand your self-interest. Myself, I do not do that.

As an Objectivist, I believe that a statement must be both logically consistent and empirically verifiable to be considered true. Analytic facts are synthetically provable and rational conclusions are externally testable. Consequently, I believe that theft is intrinsically evil, by which I understand that stealing from other people is bad for me. Personally, if I invited Joseph Rowlands to dinner, I would count the silverware before I let him leave -- but if he refused to give it back, it would be my own fault for inviting him in the first place. Also, I would not use force against him, for several reaons. Among them: it would be bad for my peace of mind; and, he obviously has too limited a mentality to learn from the lesson.

As for the American Revolution, I think that the people of the colonies could have enjoyed 200 years of wildly exuberant freedom if they had done almost anything else rather than fight a war to prove their point.

Post 15

Saturday, October 15 - 6:39pm

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Ah - you mean Eric Frank Russell's "And then there were none..." gambit?

Post 16

Saturday, October 15 - 6:55pm

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In another thread, Michael Marotta wrote:

Maybe the truth is that the ideal society is like Asimov's Solaria and the other Spacer worlds of the Bailey/Olivaw murder mysteries. If we had more resources, we would not need other people. Our market economy, based on service to others as it must be is flawed. Consider that ancient Rome could have had an industrial revolution, but that slave labor made Heron's steam engines uneconomical -- or so it is said. So, too, like them, do we have a surplus of people living close together which makes true automation -- and true personal liberty -- uneconomical.

Meanwhile, Robert Malcom opined:
Ah - you mean Eric Frank Russell's "And then there were none..." gambit?

I had not thought about that story, but yes that is good example. In fact, that story was one of the original influences to Star Trek. The Vulcans and Klingons, etc., were supposed to be humans whose societies adapted to different circumstances once cut off from the central empire which had now sent out the Enterprise. That premise did not survive but a few stories. Anyway, yes, just walk away...

Post 17

Sunday, October 16 - 1:56am

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Sarah House wrote:

Why is peaceful still being associated with passive? What about preventing them from harming you, yet still not harming them?

I agree! And in reply to the pacifist motto "Better Red than dead," didn't Ayn Rand say, "Better see the Reds dead"?

Roger Bissell, Post-Randian musician-writer

Post 18

Sunday, October 16 - 4:42am

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Roger Bissell wrote: "I agree! And in reply to the pacifist motto "Better Red than dead," didn't Ayn Rand say, "Better see the Reds dead"?"

Here is how patriotism turns into McCarthyism and individualism becomes fascism.

If someone tries to rob you, you have a right to defend yourself. If your neighbors vote to rob you, you have a right to defend yourself.
If someone announces their intention to rob you, to enslave you, to kill you, then you do not have to wait for them to act. You must defend yourself against the threat and you have a perfect right to do so. You have a right to overwhelm any threatening force.

When I booted up one morning last month, my homepage -- set to CNN -- showed a story about the founding of a communist cooperative in California. These old hippies and their Gen-X kids and their Gen-Y/Next/Whatever children all bought some land in the mountains they started a commune. They all work together and share the rewards of their farming and gathering -- though they fish, they do not hunt, being opposed to killing animals. (They failed to establish the essential distinguishing characteristic which removed fish from the wider concept of animal.) They also do not chop down just any tree, but have druids and witches who decide which trees are ready for harvesting. Well, I found that so threatening that I went out there and killed them all before they got to me.

Tell me, Roger, why see anyone dead?

Post 19

Sunday, October 16 - 10:09am

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I don't think the War For Independence could have been settled non-violently. But the Civil War could and would have. Since I'm succeeding in making everyone hate me, I might as well state my opinion that Lincoln did more evil than good to America! Many other nations ended racial slavery without massive bloodshed and civil war. But NO! It took Lincoln to create atrocious slaughter in the name of equality that this country still has not recovered from!

Scott

The American Revolution: Paradigm or Myth?