🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov15.210057.28973@eaglet.rain.com> rick@eaglet.rain.com (Rick Lindsley) writes:
[...]
>I know one thing though. As long as the winning percentage is less than
>60%, maybe even 65%, the losing side will continue to bring the subject
>up for referendum again as often as the law permits.  I continue to
>think an exchange of reasonings and views will win more of the
>fence-sitters than an exchange of slings and arrows.
>
>Rick

This may or may not be the case.  I'm not arguing for abandonment of
"an exchange of reasonings and views".  I don't want to get into a pissing
contest with the pacifists over whose tactics are "most effective".
I would most strenuously object to *abandonment* of "exchange of slings and
arrows", like the pacifists and the OCA folks want us to do.

Look at history, folks.

The pacifists are fond of pointing out the gains made by the approaches of
Gandhi and Martin Luther King in their respective fights for their people,
and contrasting that to the "failed" approaches of the militants and
non-pacifists.  But actually, neither Gandhi nor King would have gotten
*anything* they wanted without the *presence* of other players in the game,
well-prepared to offer future scenarios far worse than any threat Gandhi and
King ever made.  Now Gandhi and/or King never had to, nor would they ever have,
mentioned that the Brits in the one case, and the US civic (both national and
local, all the way from Congress to local police departments) authorities
in the other, basically faced a binary choice: they either could sit down and
play ball with somebody willing to play by the rules and who had basically
good intentions *and* a stake in the system, OR deal with other angry, less
placable entities and groups who, perceiving that the "nice" approaches
failed, and not having any stake in the system, now see that there is
nothing to lose and everything to gain (namely, life itself) by casting
off all restraint.  Both were too sophisticated and shrewd to say that,
perhaps.  It must have occurred to the more perceptive Brits & US authorities,
though.  Result?  *presto*!  India becomes a country! the US blacks get civil
rights! [of course, we're not out of the woods yet, but everybody's better
off when the "nice" scenario is taken, capice, bunky??]

This is a scenario that has unfolded time and time again in history.
Ignore it at potentially great cost (and please note, this cost will *not*
be borne by those who already have nothing to lose.  Guess who that leaves?).
All of this, of course, is just IHMO.  Ciao.
-- 
kurt@grogatch.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum)
Subvert the Anti-Gands!		F-IW	MYOB