<Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Ghandi, John Lennon, and Jesus Christ got it together and sort of made it work.>
Mary, Nelson wasn't exactly a peacenik. He was a boxer for a start, and was a member of the African National Congress which was involved in violent acts. Then he spent a LOT of his life in prison, which is quite a major reduction in the freedom factor. I don't see any meritorious and successful peacenikism there.
Martin Luther King was murdered at a youngish age. He'd have been better to defend himself, or be defended, by shooting the person who was going to shoot him, if necessary. Perhaps you think that would have been bad, which immediately means you quite like the idea of live human sacrifice to create martyrs to promote a cause. Welcome to the Osama camp [lots of women think he is one cool dude, so I can see how you'd think human sacrifice and martyrdom are good ideas].
Being a martyr and hoping you get your way with civil disobedience only works against civilized people like Gorby, the British, the Euro South Africans, Americans. It doesn't work against Himmler, Goering, Eichmann, Lt William Calley, Stalin, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao who will use any and all force to conduct their operations, whether millions die or not. All that matters is their power. They don't give it up because some dope gets in the way of a tank.
Mahatma Ghandi got his independent India, became boss and supervised mayhem and murder because the British were civilized and not prepared to murder vast numbers of people. They were interested in mercantilism, not murder. Ghandi supervised more murder than the British. The partition was not a labour of love.
India could have carried on like New Zealand, Australia and Canada as part of the British Empire, gradually dissolving the bonds, rather than having a revolution. That's true peacenikism - not the passive-aggressive actions of Ghandi's gangs. You can see that we Kiwis are the true peaceniks - we didn't get violent against British rule, or even conduct passive resistance campaigns of civil disobedience.
John Lennon would have done well to shoot first. Being shot was not a success.
Jesus and the crusaders for Christianity have had centuries and now millennia of popularity, but look at the carnage perpetrated in His name, peace be upon him, but more importantly, peace be upon me. Excommunication and execution are bywords of Christianity. Burning of witches and heretics at the stake a way to heavenly salvation. It was ironic that Catholicism took over where the Roman Empire left off.
I guess your list had a point and I think it was that being killed, gaoled, or supervising carnage, are somehow good things if other people later get to adopt your ideas [even if they get it wrong].
For me, I'd defend myself if I could. I couldn't be sure that it was the Habeas Corpus British with "On Liberty" bartleby.com their byword, that I was up against instead of Adolf's "Mein Kampf" and his henchmen.
We don't hear about the great Jewish pacifists who succeeded against Adolf, because there aren't any. They were murdered. Note that it was Winston Churchill's battle cry and USA military-industrial complex and Soviet Union force of arms, together with the Kiwi 8th Army [my father] who stopped Adolf and the genocide. It was not my father's cousin, a WWI war hero peacenik, who was gaoled [criminally in my view] for speaking out against the war. dnzb.govt.nz
Women have a different point of view from men. Women quite like powerful alpha males and are not usually killed in war, but are taken for the victorious troop. Women soon switch allegiance. That's part of evolution in mammals. The males fight for dominance, territory and the females. The females stand by and ogle the victors. It's part of the limbic system, right there in the base of male and female brains, which has been around for eons. Males don't like being killed, or chased off their territory to starvation. They save themselves by fighting back if necessary.
That's why males are bigger and more muscular than females. It's called sexual dimorphism I believe. Being smart is part of that process - he who can form big, smart, co-operative gangs goes on to win the women.
The process is ending, but in the ending, the bangs and carnage are bigger. To end the Japanese Empire's violent lust for power and enslavement of comfort women and bulk murder of men, it took a couple of nuclear bombs, which followed vast carnage with conventional weapons.
Now, we are staring down the barrel of nuclear-armed China, North Korea, Russia, Iran and they do NOT like that habeas corpus, John Stuart Mill freedom nonsense. North Korea executes people who make a break for it. alertnet.org Note that those 70 pacifists can go on your list. Okay, maybe they weren't pacifists, but maybe they were. Do you think North Korea lets the pacifists off?
The answer is It. We are going to rule the world, [HaHaHaHaHaHaHa = maniacal laughter], and then there really will be peace, light, harmony, happiness, health, prosperity, longevity, fun and love. It will be the long-awaited second coming. People misunderstand the second coming to mean some bloke wandering around with a long beard wearing a toga. It is actually It.
Stand by for the Rapture when we are all uploaded to It and can join the cosmic consciousness in peace, light, harmony, happiness, .... etc...
CDMA will power most of the wireless part of It. QUALCOMM is the engineer.
The fun has begun,
Mqurice |
