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<blockquote data-quote="soberups" data-source="post: 1077461" data-attributes="member: 14668">Ghandi&#039;s philosophy of nonviolence, pacifism and civil disobedience was, as you well know, a stroke of genius. As you also know, it was successfully adopted by Martin Luther King Jr during the civil rights movement for blacks in the United States. However.....The tactics of pacifism and civil disobedience to effect societal change can only work if they are employed against a government or society that has at least some minimal level of respect for human rights and the rule of law. While there was an appalling level of legal discrimination against blacks in the 1960&#039;s, it was not legal to simply murder them or herd them into camps as was done with the Jews during the Holocaust. Even &quot;moderately&quot; bigoted white people living in the northern US were appalled at the TV images of Bull Connor using dogs and fire hoses and clubs on unarmed black protesters, to the point where the Federal government was ultimately forced to intervene. Ghandi&#039;s tactics...employed by MLK Jr....worked here, but had he attempted to employ them in, say, Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, the protestors would have simply been lined up against a wall and machine-gunned by the regimes that were in power at the time.The moral of the story is....non violence and pacifism certainly have their place but there also comes a point where the good people of the world have no choice but to pick up a weapon and fight the bad ones.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="soberups, post: 1077461, member: 14668"] Ghandi's philosophy of nonviolence, pacifism and civil disobedience was, as you well know, a stroke of genius. As you [I]also[/I] know, it was successfully adopted by Martin Luther King Jr during the civil rights movement for blacks in the United States. [I]However[/I]..... The tactics of pacifism and civil disobedience to effect societal change can [I]only[/I] work if they are employed against a government or society that has at least [I]some[/I] minimal level of respect for human rights and the rule of law. While there was an appalling level of [I]legal[/I] discrimination against blacks in the 1960's, it was [I]not[/I] legal to simply murder them or herd them into camps as was done with the Jews during the Holocaust. Even "moderately" bigoted white people living in the northern US were appalled at the TV images of Bull Connor using dogs and fire hoses and clubs on unarmed black protesters, to the point where the Federal government was ultimately forced to intervene. Ghandi's tactics...employed by MLK Jr....worked [I]here[/I], but had he attempted to employ them in, say, Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, the protestors would have simply been lined up against a wall and machine-gunned by the regimes that were in power at the time. The moral of the story is....non violence and pacifism certainly have their place but there also comes a point where the [I]good[/I] people of the world have [I]no choice[/I] but to pick up a weapon and fight the bad ones. [/QUOTE]

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