Comments on: War and Peace

By: John

John — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 01:39:50 +0000

There’s the national level stuff, but at the individual level, there’s a growing voice that humans are getting tired of getting hammered by governments and the corporations that own them.

Something will give.

Hopefully the body count is Egypt-like rather than Libya-like.

I don’t think it will be.

By: Brad Warbiany

Brad Warbiany — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 14:54:05 +0000

PTTG,

Thanks for the comment. Yes, the Civil War was one point in a far larger social arc. And while MLK’s peaceful acts by themselves gave a special legitimacy to the civil rights movement in the 60′s, one can’t exactly claim that there weren’t quite less peaceful events going on at the time. The Civil War (which, while one can claim wasn’t fought in order to stop slavery, it was clear to most involved that this is what the fight was truly about) destroyed slavery, but it didn’t generate a respect for racial & political equality that neither the North nor the South were ready for. More work had to occur, and the turbulent 1960′s is what brought it about.

Granted, different events play out different ways. America required a war to liberate ourselves from the crown and a war to end slavery. Britain ended slavery relatively painlessly and left India without a fight. If a situation is left long enough, the entrenched interests lose their power and don’t require such a blow to be defeated.

As for Egypt/Tunisia, I wouldn’t make any pronouncements yet. Those are not national events — this is a regional change of very massive proportions. The middle east is on step 8 of a much longer process, and it just might happen that step 94 is a major regional war to eradicate the dictatorial rule of most of the nations in the region.

Nor is every “jarring blow” violent — the Great Depression in the US was certainly a jarring blow, but a peaceful one. One can make an argument that its purpose was to force America to build a social safety net that our national libertarian streak wouldn’t have accepted without such major strife. Never let a crisis go to waste, right? And yet it is all, again, part of a much larger arc, as the New Deal has built from a minor social safety net into a behemoth threatening to strangle the finances of the entire government and incompatible with the fast-moving information age of today — to break down the monstrosity that the New Deal has become will not be done without a major blow, whether peaceful or violent.

I think we’re in the same position — we see potential things that could develop badly on the horizon, and we both hope that they don’t play out in worst-case-scenario sorts of ways. I am concerned, however, that it’s not going to be painless.

By: PTTG

PTTG — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 07:28:02 +0000

I respectfully disagree with your statement that war is essential to change the status quo, or even successful. The Civil War was only a punctuation in the long history of civil rights in the US that is continuing to this day, and though it was a major sea change, the goal of the war (and the emancipation proclamation) was not to free the slaves, but to reclaim the south. The Civil Wars of Europe may have changed the leaderships of those countries, but other European wars, such as the first world war, only created new tensions and new causes for war.

But just as war does not always work, there are other things that can make lasting change; consider Gandhi’s acts, and Martin Luther King jr.’s acts, and even the relatively bloodless revolutions of Tunisia and Egypt.

I do not believe that a protest or a battle can make permanent change, but a movement or a war can ultimately do the same thing, and a peaceful movement will do so far more permanently, more deeply.

That all said, I think you are entirely right to say that in the near future, we will see some new jarring changes in the world. This may even be war. But I would still deeply hope that this is not the case; that some other course can be taken, because there *are* other ways.