Strategic Nonviolence
Jon Chait observes that “For a revolution to succeed, it generally needs one of two things to happen: Either it needs its own weapons, or it needs mass defections by the state security forces.” He also sees some evidence that some elements of the security forces may be contemplating defection.
I think it’s worth emphasizing that in the modern world at least, the balance is tipped pretty overwhelmingly to security service defection rather than actual armed overthrow of the powers that be. The reality is that modern military technology makes it extraordinarily difficult to actually defeat a state on the battlefield. An dissident movement just isn’t going to be able to be able to blow up tanks and airplanes. Under the circumstances, strategic nonviolence is a vital tactic. If you were to try to fight the security forces—shoot some policemen, say—you’d encourage a more serious crackdown. It’s through nonviolent resistance that you heighten the psychological contradictions, and encourage the regime and its enforcers to blink. From the Velvet Revolution to Tiananmen Square to the Orange Revolution to what’s happening today in Iran, the brave dissidents are essentially daring the security forces to beat or kill them. The bet is that when push comes to shove, people in the Iranian security forces have some humane and patriotic instincts and will recoil from the idea of using mass violence against their fellow citizens. And it’s a terrifying bet. We’ve seen time and again that it’s a bet that often pays off, but as we learned in China 20 years ago there are no guarantees.
89 Responses to “Strategic Nonviolence”
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June 17th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
It worked at first in China. The soldiery around the square were locals, and didn’t want to kill the protesters. Then the government brought in troops from a far off rural area. The people in rural China often thought of the students as pampered rich kids who had it all and wanted more. To some extent, they were right. The students were relatively wealthy, they had promising futures, and now they wanted freedom. I’m not saying that the soldiers hated the students enough to want to kill them, but htey resented them enough to be willing to follow orders.
That raises the question,how broad is the protest movement in Iran? Is there someone the government can bring in to massacre the protesters? Who can be their Cossacks?
June 17th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
So when are the Palestinians going to get clued-in to non-violence?
They could achieve many of their goals in a few months if they went non-violent. Sincerely non-violent, of course and not non-violence as a ruse.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Nonsense. Defeating a state on the battlefield is called “civil war”, not “revolution”. And, of course, nothing’s wrong with shooting some policemen.
About 100 years before Chait’s discovery, a well-known polemicist wrote this:
It’s only because the upper classes are demoralized the security forces may refuse to massacre, not because of any “strategic nonviolence”. Security forces love nonviolence.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
And it’s a terrifying bet.
Which is all the more reason it’s important that those who up the ante, raise the stakes, etc. in the showdown be those who are actually at risk, and not comfortable American (and, ahem, Anglo-American) bloggers who don’t face any danger if the gamble fails.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
My only quibble here is that what Fisk observed is perhaps not accurately described as a “defection”. The Revolutionary Guards and the regular army answer to the Leadership through the Supreme National Leadership Council. They don’t answer to the president. Since Khamenei has called for an election probe, he has effectively legitimized the protests in the country – whether he meant to do so or not. The security forces may see their chief role as preventing violence, not initiating a violent crackdown.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
So when are the Palestinians going to get clued-in to non-violence?
They could achieve many of their goals in a few months if they went non-violent. Sincerely non-violent, of course and not non-violence as a ruse.
They were and it didn’t work. The first intifada was a response to years of ineffective nonviolent protest. Violence hasn’t worked either obviously. They need the help of outside coutries by people who care about what happens outsider their home nations.
Nonviolence didn’t work for the Buddhist monks of Burma either. As Matt points out it didn’t work in China.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
It’s broad enough that I think it’d be difficult to find locals willing to do that much killing. Plus, unlike China, the information about the protests is being spread to pretty much the entire population. In China, the government could bring in soldiers that didn’t know exactly what was going on, they could be told that the protesters were anti-China agents or whatever.
Iran could, in theory, ship in people from Hezbolla to boot heads, but that would lead to two problems. It’d mess with Hezbolla’s cred as being a Lebanese liberation/defense force, and it would really piss off the Iranians to have outsiders killing their citizens.
If the Iranian government wants to crack down on this they’ll have to get the hardest of the hard core Basij and Revolutionary Guards to do it, and they’ll have to hope that the regular army and police don’t try and stop it.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Rob Farley’s post exploring a similar theme is worth a read: http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2009/06/tank-man-and-tank-commander.html
June 17th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
… through the Supreme National Leadership Council.
Should have said: through the Supreme National Security Council.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Speaking in the broadest sense, the 21st century will, hopefully, be remembered for drawing into sharp relief the conflict between incumbent power and human progress. Whether it be intransigent regimes, corporations, or metaphysical dogma. Civil disobedience is all about “turning up” that aforementioned contrast, and wresting control of perception from the acien regime. The question is: wether nonviolence and other civil direct action (such as community organizing) will be enough. I hope it is.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
MY “heighten the psychological contradictions”
That’s right. “Sow disorder and confusion in the enemies ranks and the battle need not be fought.”
Who said that? Sun Tzu? Just kidding. I made it up. Anyone with half a noodle knows you don’t fight automatic weapons with paper airplanes.
June 17th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
So when are the Palestinians going to get clued-in to non-violence?
As soon as pure-blood-Jews-only Zionist IDF starts mass-defecting to the side of the indigenous population; any day now, I’m sure.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Military and security force defections – and what is equally important, hesitation or extended delay in using deadly force – has been frequent and decisive in facilitating the victory of civilian-based resistance movements. It happened in certain cities in the South that experienced civil rights campaigns in the U.S., in the people power revolution in the Philippines in 1986, in Prague in 1989, in Serbia in 2000, and in Ukraine in 2004. But it’s not that soldiers don’t shoot because they have humane instincts — that’s a misconception fostered by a simplistic notion of how “nonviolence” works. Except for the lone instance of Filipino soldiers not wanting to be brutal to nuns on the front line of one advancing column of protesters in Manila in 1986, I know of no modern movement where soldiers didn’t shoot because they were humane. (And at Dharmasala, Gandhi’s own marchers were savagely beaten for hours.) They don’t shoot because (a) they don’t want to take the chance that they’ll be on the wrong side of the power struggle by doing so, because they sense that revolution is in the air once they see hundreds of thousand of people, (b) they actually agree with the political-social goals of the movement, and (c) they realize that they’ll be shooting into people from the same kind of neighborhoods and families they come from. The latter reason is not moral, it’s identity/existential: They see the people in the movement and they realize they’re looking at themselves.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
The size of the force one needs to subjugate the rabble is getting smaller every day, thanks to technology. And robots, especially, can be rendered heartless.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
The reality is that modern military technology makes it extraordinarily difficult to actually defeat a state on the battlefield.
Counter-insurgency is easy?
June 17th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
One reason for the US Government to proceed cautiously is the precedent from the 1980s. At that time, the Iranian government was tottering as many of the Ayatollah Khomeinis’ followers were being assassinated and there was general unrest in the country, particularly in the army which had not yet been thoroughly purged of followers of the Shah. Then Saddam Hussein, sensing apparent weakness, launched his invasion of Iran for the purpose of capturing oil fields adjacent to Iraq. This invasion saved the Khomeini dictatorship, which might have fallen in its absence. Thus, among Saddams’ many crimes is the salvation of the regime of the mad mullahs in Iran.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
‘Modern military technology’? ‘Extraordinarily difficult’? Just what is Mr. Yglesias talking about. As we saw in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Cuba in the 1950s, sometimes guerrillas riding on donkeys can defeat armies riding tanks. And as we saw in Viet Nam, sometimes a bunch of plucky little guerrillas armed with crossbows and rifles can take down the might of the U.S. Military.
The real issue here, of course, is that Mr. Yglesias likes the idea of civil disobedience because he’s basically a soft person at heart, and doesn’t have the stomach to fight and die for anything he believes in (not that he believes in much). So he would rather dream of a Kum-Ba-Yah world in which we can all just get along, as Mr. Rodney King would have it. Unfortunately, Mr. Yglesias, like most other hipsters, is not terribly well informed about history. History is not Stuff White People Like.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Here’s an empirical refutation of the mistaken belief that nonviolent resistance doesn’t work: Between 1900 and 2006, violent resistance campaigns succeeded in 26% of cases, and nonviolent resistance campaigns succeeded in 53% of cases. Source: http://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/PDF/IS3301_pp007-044_Stephan_Chenoweth.pdf
June 17th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
The real issue here, of course, is that Mr. Yglesias likes the idea of civil disobedience because he’s basically a soft person at heart, and doesn’t have the stomach to fight and die for anything he believes in (not that he believes in much). So he would rather dream of a Kum-Ba-Yah world in which we can all just get along, as Mr. Rodney King would have it. Unfortunately, Mr. Yglesias, like most other hipsters, is not terribly well informed about history. History is not Stuff White People Like.
Hector, you realize that, as a Christian, there’s no higher form of resistance to evil and cruelty than civil disobedience.
If you actually believe this stuff, then you’ll recall that, had He wanted, the big man Himself could have called down armies more terrible than anything the Roman Empire could muster.
But he didn’t, and neither did Peter, Paul, Barnabas, Bartholomew, Matthias, Matthew, Mark, Thomas, James, Jude, Stephen.
If the history of Christianity should have taught you anything, it’s that Civil Disobedience takes guts far beyond ordinary resistance. Faith doesn’t do much when your opponent has iron, steel, depleted uranium discarding sabots, and thermonuclear warheads.
If you’re going to castigate Matt, do it because he is, yet again, pushing other people to put themselves in harm’s way when he sits in a coffee house in DC.
But don’t imply that these protesters don’t have guts or will.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
“As we saw in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Cuba in the 1950s, sometimes guerrillas riding on donkeys can defeat armies riding tanks. And as we saw in Viet Nam, sometimes a bunch of plucky little guerrillas armed with crossbows and rifles can take down the might of the U.S. Military.”
Hector, you’re comparing apples (guerrilla wars) and oranges (civil disobedience to take down a regime).
In recent history, civil disobedience seems to have won out, and it’s because of a careful maneouvering by the side using civil disobedience (including within-elite struggles) and the difficulty the existing regime has in calibrating the right level of violence to use to remain in power. See the splits within the military and the KGB in the attempted coup of August 1991 for an example. You want to keep the security services divided and equivocating.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
“And as we saw in Viet Nam, sometimes a bunch of plucky little guerrillas armed with crossbows and rifles can take down the might of the U.S. Military.”
This is a myth. Yes, the Viet Cong were armed fairly lightly, but they still had AK-47s, which proved more reliable than our M-16s. But the North Vietnamese Army had MIGs and surface to air missiles. And tanks, and artillery. John McCain was not shot down with a crossbow. He was shot down with a state of the art surface to air missile. Overall, the Vietnamese we were fighting were slightly outgunned, but they had home field advantage. And the crucial part: they had much better spies. That cute girl you’re talking to at the bar? She’s a VC spy. Sun Tsu made that point very clear. Intelligence and deception is how you win wars. Ho Chi Minh read his Sun Tsu better than we did.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
I read in other commentary on the Iranian situation that the Shah’s regime was overthrown this same way. People were gunned down in the streets until the security forces finally stopped obeying orders. Having martyrs on your side confers a particular advantage in Shiite culture. Of course, Iran’s current rulers are very aware of this!
June 17th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
The reality is that modern military technology makes it extraordinarily difficult to actually defeat a state on the battlefield. An dissident movement just isn’t going to be able to be able to blow up tanks and airplanes.
Actually, I think this is pretty wrong. The proliferation of cheap AKs and RPGs, and knowledge of how to make IEDs, has made it easier, not harder, for armed revolutionaries to beat most modern states (remember Hezbollah knocking out all those Israeli Merkava tanks with shoulder-mounted RPG-29s?).
I think the reason most modern revolutionaries don’t go for armed revolt is that nowadays they tend to be urban middle-class types with a lot to lose, whereas 50 or 60 years ago they would have mostly been poor farmers with very little to lose.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
“The proliferation of cheap AKs and RPGs, and knowledge of how to make IEDs,…”
Noah makes a good point here. It was true in Vietnam, but it’s even more true now. An AK-47 will cost about $30 in Phnom Penh, assuming you’re okay with the Chinese version. And there are probably places in Africa where they are even cheaper. The 7.62mm round is the most common bullet in the world and can be bought anywhere cheaply. And let’s face it, the true weapon of mass destruction is still the AK-47. No weapons has killed more people.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Re Noah
The supposed effectiveness of Hizbollahs’ anti-tank weapons was rather exaggerated. The Jerusalem Post published an analysis after the Lebanon war and concluded that some 51 tanks were hit by several hundred rounds fired, with some 20 damaged seriously enough to cause casualties to the crews. The Germans did a lot better against the Shermans in the 2nd WW.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
But the North Vietnamese Army had MIGs and surface to air missiles. And tanks, and artillery. John McCain was not shot down with a crossbow. He was shot down with a state of the art surface to air missile. Overall, the Vietnamese we were fighting were slightly outgunned, but they had home field advantage. And the crucial part: they had much better spies. That cute girl you’re talking to at the bar? She’s a VC spy. Sun Tsu made that point very clear. Intelligence and deception is how you win wars. Ho Chi Minh read his Sun Tsu better than we did.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
It’s like no one will ever bother reading about how the war was fought.
Hell, in the 19 fucking 50s Dien Bien Phu was not a massive defeat for the French because the Viet Minh threw bamboo at them; it was a massive defeat because the idiotic French built their fortress in a valley that Giap surrounded with Soviet artillery.
And the point about that intelligence apparatus is crucial – it exemplifies the fact that nearly everyone was on the side of the North. From the intelligentsia of the cities to the stevedores unloading MACV ships and trucks to the meanest guy in the rice paddies.
If these protests aren’t matched by similar feelings among the rural population, or some other major group that can contribute troops, then the government can dust off the old banner of holy war, and blow the shit out of the protesters.
Civil Disobedience wouldn’t have worked in India – without even going into the Bose and INA issue – had the Muslims and Sikhs been committed to British rule; that would have still given the Empire a major reserve of manpower to crack down on the resisters.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
“Iran could, in theory, ship in people from Hezbolla to boot heads,”
Ridiculous. There aren’t enough Hizballah troops to do that and Nasrallah would never allow it for precisely the reasons cited. He doesn’t mind shipping his people to Iran for training, but he damn sure isn’t going to act as Iran’s policeman.
Iran doesn’t need any outsiders. They have the IRGC, answerable only to the Supreme Leader, and the Basij militia, which numbers anywhere from several million to 13 million, and which are the primary shock troops opposing the Iranian opposition at the moment.
And those guys are fanatics. If the opposition expects either the IRGC or the Basij to defect, they’re in for a surprise.
In fact, the IRGC and the Basij are one reason Ahmadinejad won the election. They mobilized big time for him, especially out in the rural areas where the poor farmers still support him.
The protests you see in Tehran don’t represent all of Iran.
Matt: “The reality is that modern military technology makes it extraordinarily difficult to actually defeat a state on the battlefield. An dissident movement just isn’t going to be able to be able to blow up tanks and airplanes.”
As others have pointed out, this is just stupid. Matt once again demonstrates his UTTER lack of knowledge of insurgency, guerrilla war, counter-insurgency, and the state of 4th Gen War. Besides which, as others have pointed out here, there’s a difference between a “dissident movemtn” and an insurgency and between an insurgency and a civil war.
Iran isn’t on the verge of any of those. This “dissident” movement is nothing but a bunch of pawns for Rafsanjani to try to improve his position vis-a-vis Khamenei after Khamenei maneuvers in this regard using the election have put Rafsanjani in a less tenable position. This is Khamenei implementing an “internal coup” reducing Rafsanjani’s power, and the protests are Rafsanjani responding, whatever the people in the protests think.
The end result will be either a re-shaping of the religious power in the country, or it will all die down after some compromises are made.
None of which will affect the external foreign policy of Iran vis-a-vis the US or Israel, or its nuclear energy program.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
“The Germans did a lot better against the Shermans in the 2nd WW.”
Yeah, but they had a massive military infrastructure. 20 out 51 is still pretty good. Especially when you consider that the weapons are produced without the benefit of a massive military budget. If you can spend 5% of what your enemy spends and do half as well, you’ll win eventually.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
Thanks, but I have an advantage. I’ve actually been to Vietnam and talked to soldiers who fought. And I’ve seen the weapons they were using at the museums. They had some pretty nice stuff.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Plus, SLC, you realize that a Merkava costs way more than a Sherman.
And that the trend in hardware has been towards fewer, higher tech machines.
In the First World War, the Allies and the Germans had biplane fleets in the tens of thousands.
Hell, look at 73. I think there may have been more Centurions, Chieftains, and godawful Pattons in Barak Brigade (a long service unit, we’re not talking about potential numbers of tanks) in Golan than the entire IDF uses today.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Thanks, but I have an advantage. I’ve actually been to Vietnam and talked to soldiers who fought. And I’ve seen the weapons they were using at the museums. They had some pretty nice stuff.
Just to bring up your Kalashnikov point.
My best friend’s Dad was one of the stone cold killers the ROK sent down as tribute money during the sixties. He still hates the sight of the M-16.
And the Nam guys at my late Grandpa’s VFW had a dartboard of Eugene Stoner’s face for a long time, least as long as I can remember.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Re: SLC
You may be right, but compare the costs.
And look at the damage Iraqi insurgents have inflicted on the U.S. forces with IEDs. And compare the costs.
It’s still hard for revolutionaries to beat most states. But it’s not nearly as hard as it would have been in, say, the 1930s. That’s where I think MY gets it wrong.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
It’s still hard for revolutionaries to beat most states. But it’s not nearly as hard as it would have been in, say, the 1930s. That’s where I think MY gets it wrong.
SLC will, rightly, respond that’s because political pressures have made Hama Rules politically unacceptable for the major powers’ militaries.
The Germans had, in reality, very little problems controlling most of Western Europe because of their supreme willingness to keep shooting people or shipping them to the camps until they got their point across.
None of which does anything other than reinforce your point. It doesn’t matter why we don’t simply shoot them, the fact is, we can’t simply shoot them.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
“They had some pretty nice stuff.”
I should add they they made some pretty nice stuff on the cheap. When you’re cutting through the jungle, you need a machete. Ours were industrially manufactured and cost $150. They would take the leaf springs from a burned out jeep, hone one edge and wrap bamboo to make a handle. And we supplied the leaf springs for them. That burned out jeep would also supply soles for shoes, woks for cooking, and spare tires and parts for their jeeps. The Vietnamese waste nothing. My last roommate (MHRIP), had a funny story about how they took his empty Coors beer cans and turned them into mortar shells. How do you win against people like that? The answer is simple: nobody ever did.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Re Noah
Actually, roadside bombs and mines are much more effective against tanks then anti-tank weapons because they attack the tank in its soft underbelly that is only lightly armored. Designing a tank is much like designing a battleship, one can’t provide equal protection everywhere, else the tank would be too heavy to move and the battleship would sink.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Re fostert
The only way to win against the type of opposition we faced in Vietnam is to apply Hama Rules. Of course, application of Hama Rules in Vietnam would probably have led to Chinese intervention, as in Korea, which Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon moved heaven and earth to avoid.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Fostert,
I’m sure you are correct, but it has been documented that the Vietcong did use crossbows during jungle warfare, and on at least one occasion apparently did shoot down a low flying helicopter with a crossbow.
June 17th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
That’s good point SLC, every military vehicle has it’s soft spot. But what’s more important is that people know how to make shaped charges now. In the old days, a bomb would blow in all directions and most of the charge would be wasted. Now, we can focus the blast, and every kid on the street knows how to do it.
June 17th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
“but it has been documented that the Vietcong did use crossbows during jungle warfare”
That is correct, Hector, but they used crossbows in night ambushes to keep quiet. The concept was that you kill the guards in silence and then attack the rest of the troops while they are just waking up. Sometimes, they did the really freaky thing of breaking into a camp and slitting the throats of every other soldier while they slept. The soldiers would wake up and realize that the two guys next to them were dead. Ultimately, war is about psychology, and Vietnamese are really good at freaking people out.
June 17th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
“The only way to win against the type of opposition we faced in Vietnam is to apply Hama Rules.”
Umm, no. We did that and lost. We’d naplam entire villages and it didn’t make a damn bit of difference. Except to make them even more angry at us. We pulled no punches in Vietnam. The only way to win there is to use nuclear weapons and turn the place into a sea of glass completely devoid of life. But what’s the point of that?
June 17th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
fostert, I rather think that if old man Assad had had the arsenal we had, he would have simply nuked or gassed Hama.
But then you’re absolutely right, it’s irrelevant to speculate about us using warheads on the Central Highlands, because the Chinese and the Russians would have stepped in long before that, and we’d all be dead or hideously mutated by now.
June 17th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
“fostert, I rather think that if old man Assad had had the arsenal we had, he would have simply nuked or gassed Hama.”
Probably true. Rumsfeld was right, you really do go to war with the army you have. The question is, can you use what you have effectively? So far, the guys in the Middle East are doing a pretty good job with inferior equipment. If they were as crafty as the Vietnamese, they would have won by now. The Vietnamese could strip a jeep faster than the gangbangers in the Bronx. I don’t see that from the Arabs. The Arabs are certainly brave and tough, but it’s intelligence that wins.
June 17th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
If they were as crafty as the Vietnamese, they would have won by now. The Vietnamese could strip a jeep faster than the gangbangers in the Bronx. I don’t see that from the Arabs. The Arabs are certainly brave and tough, but it’s intelligence that wins.
Personally, if our army were not only filled by recruits from the South Bronx, but commanded by it, we’d probably have done a lot better.
In the old days it would have been perfectly acceptable to recruit a mercenary army of Vietnamese to do the fighting for us.
If we bought out the contract of a few divisions, we’d probably be able to do pretty well.
Actually, fostert, I believe that the real analog of the VC and NVA these days is several hundred miles to the east; and they’re doing a pretty damn good job of replicating the old Viet Minh/Cong/NVA successes. It’ll take them a while, but I have little doubt that they’ll win.
June 17th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
“Personally, if our army were not only filled by recruits from the South Bronx, but commanded by it, we’d probably have done a lot better.”
That’s probably true. I’d say the best army we could make would be single mothers from the Hood. They’re the toughest people I’ve ever met. Even tougher than Vietnamese mothers. Just promise them that their kid will go to college if they just fight until the war is over, and they’ll give you everything they got and more. And they won’t take shit from anyone. Not even the gangbangers in their neighborhood.
June 17th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Uh, both Jesus and Paul preached the opposite of civil disobedience.
June 17th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Greg,
We tried that, with the Hmong. Unfortunately for the late and unlamented Lyndon B. Johnson, there were not enough Hmong, and too many Vietnamese.
And please don’t compare the North Vietnamese to the hordes of Jihadist barbarians that we are fighting in Afghanistan.
June 17th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
“Uh, both Jesus and Paul preached the opposite of civil disobedience.”
What? Jesus got his ass killed for civil disobedience. Although that incident with the money changers was somewhat less than civil. Paul was nearly lynched in Ephesus for his antics, but was saved by Roman soldiers because he was a Roman citizen. The Romans weren’t happy with him either, but they’d at least give him a trial. Whatever the two may have preached, they certainly lived the life of civil disobedience. And they paid the price with their lives. I’m not really a fan of Christianity, but Jesus and his disciples were some really brave people who fought for their beliefs and paid for it with their lives. My favorite is St Thomas (my namesake), who traveled to India to spread the Gospel. He got a lucky death. They just drove a spear into the back of his skull. As deaths go, that’s a quick one. Whether you agree or not with what Jesus and his disciples say, you cannot discount their bravery.
June 17th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Fostert,
Incidentally, you do know why St. THomas was killed. It was less about religion than about sex. He placed a great emphasis on celibacy, even between husband and wife, and apparently convinced the wife of the local king to stop sleeping with him. The king was rather incensed, and ordered St. Thomas to be killed with spears.
Jesus was executed for blasphemy and treason, specifically for claiming to be both God and King. Not for civil disobedience, per se. Of course in a broader sense, he was killed because his sacrifice was necessary in order to free humanity from sin, death, and the devil. As Isaiah foretold, “He was scourged for our transgressions…and by his wounds we are healed.”
Or in other words, Mr. Yglesias isn’t Jesus.
June 17th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
But yes, Fostert, St. Thomas is one of my favorite Apostles (along with St. John who was Jesus’ favorite as well). In part because he had a deep (bordering on heretical) appreciation for degree to which evil is present in our world, and in part because he was the apostle to my people, and in part because like so many of us he felt doubt, and Christ brilliantly used his doubt to refute the Docetist heresy in advance. Oh yeah, and he claimed to be able to talk to snakes….how cool is that? If I have a son his middle name will be Thomas.
June 17th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
“Unfortunately for the late and unlamented Lyndon B. Johnson, there were not enough Hmong, and too many Vietnamese.”
Umm, the Hmong never fought the Vietnamese. They fought in Laos and Cambodia. It’s true that the Pathet Lao and the Khmer Rouge stole some weapons from the Vietnamese, but they never got any official support. And they certainly didn’t get any Vietnamese troops.
The Hmong are an interesting people. They don’t have a homeland, they just live at certain elevations and are dotted across Southeast Asia. Their language is an isolate not related to any other language in the world. They exist on two things: smuggling and lychee sales. And trust me, their lychees are awesome. Most Americans have no idea what this fruit is like, but it’s really good. And the Hmong have the best. As for what they smuggle, well, what do you want?
June 17th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
“It’s true that the Pathet Lao and the Khmer Rouge stole some weapons from the Vietnamese”
To clarify, the Hmong fought against the Pathet Lao and the Khmer Rouge. Although they did ally with the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. My point was that their enemies did not really have any support from the Vietnamese. And the only time the Hmong ever fought against the Vietnamese was on the Khmer Rouge side.
June 17th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
“If I have a son his middle name will be Thomas.”
That’s beautiful. I like St Thomas for his bravery and his unwillingness to accept things without explanation. That he doubted Jesus at times made his faith much stronger. And yes, I did know why he was killed. I learned that at St Thomas Mount in Chennai. As much as a non-Christian as I am, I’ve actually traveled to many great Christian sites. Not only have I stood where Paul did in the amphitheater in Ephesus, I held the camera while Randall Terry was giving his rant about it. And yes, I did visit John’s grave.
June 17th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Fostert,
Lychees are, indeed, pretty awesome.
Sorry, I got the Hmong confused with the Montagnards (a tribal people in central Vietnam that the US used as mercenaries against the NVA, same as they did with the Hmong against the Pathet Lao).
June 17th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
“I got the Hmong confused with the Montagnards”
I’m familiar with the Montagnards, they currently have a dispute with Cambodia and Vietnam. They want to make their territory part of Cambodia. But the Cambodians don’t really want them because they consider them to be Vietnamese, which is the worst thing in the minds of Cambodians. And the Vietnamese don’t give up territory. Ever. As always, the Montagnards will continue to be screwed. They’d be treated better if they had good lychees.
June 17th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
“And yes, I did visit John’s grave.”
And I have to credit Randall Terry for that. It wasn’t part of the tour, but Randall insisted that we go there. And I talked everyone else into it because it seemed like a cool thing to do. Randall Terry is a freak that offends me to my very core, but he is actually a fun guy to hang out with. And if you ever see the video of him talking about John in front of John’s grave, I’m the cameraman.
June 17th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
What we needed to do to win was
A)Do heavy and sustained bombing of North Vietnamese targets early on (i.e., back in the mid-1960s, when American involvement in the Vietnam situation was deepening), before they had managed to adjust them to deal with it. This is actually what the JCS recommended at the time, but SecDef McNamara (cursed be his name) did a “stop-and-go” bombing method instead, in hopes of bringing the North Vietnamese to the table in between. It didn’t work – in fact, it allowed them time to adjust to deal with bombing.
B)Focus on a better COIN model for South Vietnam with regards to protecting the population. The Marines’ CAP program actually did this well (it was an inspiration for the successful response to the communist insurgency by the Thai government), but the Army and overall response was too reliant on the Malaysian model set by the British, which was a special case with conditions that didn’t apply elsewhere.
After all, keep in mind that most South Vietnamese did not want to be part of a state dominated by the communist North.
Unless you have foreign assistance, which many revolutions get (the US had French assistance in its revolution, for example). Even then, not all armies are created equal.
June 17th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Do heavy and sustained bombing of North Vietnamese targets early on (i.e., back in the mid-1960s, when American involvement in the Vietnam situation was deepening), before they had managed to adjust them to deal with it. This is actually what the JCS recommended at the time, but SecDef McNamara (cursed be his name) did a “stop-and-go” bombing method instead, in hopes of bringing the North Vietnamese to the table in between. It didn’t work – in fact, it allowed them time to adjust to deal with bombing.
Jesus, when are you bombing fans going to learn?
We tried that in the Second World War, and it didn’t stop 1944 from being the single best production year for German industry in *everything*.
The only bombing that will produce the kind of effects you’re thinking about requires a type of weapon that we’d never have used.
June 17th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
“Do heavy and sustained bombing of North Vietnamese targets early on (i.e., back in the mid-1960s”
We bombed the shit out of Haiphong all throughout the 60s. Early, late, middle, you name it. There isn’t a building there built before 1975. This concept that if we just bombed the hell out them ignores the fact that we did bomb the hell out of them. It didn’t work. The reason is that they spent much less effort to rebuild than we spent bombing them. We’d send a plane from a base in Bangkok, fly it to Hanoi, bomb a bridge, and then fly back. They’d have the bridge rebuilt about the same time we had that plane refueled. The bridge was bamboo anyway, and there ain’t no shortage of bamboo there. Our problem is that they had no infrastructure to bomb. What they had was so minimal and easy to rebuild that there really wasn’t any point in bombing it. But even the Vietnamese get tired, so they started building their bridges underwater to make them hard to spot.
June 17th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
“We tried that in the Second World War, and it didn’t stop 1944 from being the single best production year for German industry in *everything*.”
Yeah, but they were producing at lower quality. Don’t buy a Luger made in 1943. The ones made in 1938 were much better. That doesn’t meant the ‘43 model is bad. Let’s face it, if a gun can shoot a bullet, you can kill someone with it. But if you want to fire a couple thousand rounds through a gun, it has to be well made. But in 1943, it really didn’t matter much. If a soldier fired a hundred rounds from his gun before getting killed, he’d be lucky. The guns only had to outlast the soldier. And the soldiers weren’t lasting long then.
June 17th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Hey, Vietnam talk. How cool. With theories of victory. Huzzah!
Yes, we could have won -in the 1950’s, before joint ground, air, and naval operations started. But Ho Chi Minh was a dirty commie and we righteously refused his numerous entreaties. Ho may have been a European type communist, to be sure, but hey! A commie is a commie.
Strange, though, we supported Ho and his filthy brigands during World War II to fight the Nipponese. It sounds vaguely like something we have done in our not too recent past, something that has reared up and is biting us in the ass even as we speak.
June 17th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
The real way to win the Vietnam War was to just back Ho Chi Minh. We’d have beaten the French real quick. It would have been over by 1950.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:02 am
Civil Disobedience wouldn’t have worked in India – without even going into the Bose and INA issue – had the Muslims and Sikhs been committed to British rule; that would have still given the Empire a major reserve of manpower to crack down on the resisters.
This gets the causal direction backwards. If Indians had stuck with violent methods, this would have convinced the Muslims and Sikhs that as soon as the British left, their goose was cooked. It was only because of nonviolence that Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs were willing to wait until after the British were leaving to start killing each other. That may not be the goal Gandhi had in mind, but it’s what he achieved, and nobody could have achieved it but him–nonviolence was the only way to stop the old British trick of letting natives fight it out amongst themselves, which is why previous purely violent attempts to get the British out failed.
I don’t deny that there are some conflicts that could only be won by violence, but there are also some conflicts that could only be won by nonviolence. And some conflicts that can’t be won at all.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:20 am
“It was only because of nonviolence that Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs were willing to wait until after the British were leaving to start killing each other.”
Man, that is India to the core. Gandhi’s message is well understood in India, but it is forgotten when people want to kill each other. And they do a pretty good job of killing each other. Last time I was in India, I had to wait a day to go to Darjeeling. Turns out, the Nepali separatists were burning buildings, planting bombs, and rioting in the streets. It didn’t make the national press in India. You could only read about it in the local papers in Siliguri. And those were in Hindi and Nepali. As for the world press, well, it just didn’t happen. So if it didn’t happen, then why are all the roads and trains to Darjeeling shut down? Maintenence problems, apparently. Like anything is actually maintained in India. Give me a break.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:21 am
Actually, bombing works great in certain situations. Take Gulf War I. We buried a large portion of the Iraqi army in the desert with round the clock B-52 strikes launched from distant and sundry bases. That is why Operation Desert Sabre, the ensuing massive mobile ground attack, encountered a ghost army and suffered a mere 17 casualties from enemy fire.
Honorable mention would go to Operation Goodwood, a unique event in World War II where high level bombers were used to attack ground troops.
In mid-July 1944, with an endless stalemate in the hedgerows of Normandy causing discomfit in the allied command structure, Eisenhower convinced a recalcitrant Air Corps to stop bombing German cities for a day or two and help his armies break out.
Goodwood turned out to be a smashing smashing tactical success. One thousand allied bombers concentrated on a portion of the German lines and blew a hole in them. The devastation allowed the forces led by Karl Malden…er…Omar Bradley, to roll on through. A glorious unencumbered race to the German border soon commenced.
The rest as they, would have been history, except some bombers strayed off course and unintentionally bombed allied lines. More than one hundred GI’s were killed.
Despite the unmatched success of Operation Goodwood, friendly fire casualties so unnerved Ike that he vowed he would never used tactical bomber support again. And he didn’t. And he prolonged the war as result.
What I find interesting is, these two examples of successful high level bombing are largely unknown to the general public. How many people know that the B-52 won the first Gulf War? Not many.
I think the reason is that burying an enemy combatant from 35,000 feet is considered unchivalrous, and when do, we don’t like to talk about it. But bombing civilians from up on high is fantastic. And we could talk about that all damn day. And do.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:43 am
“Actually, bombing works great in certain situations.”
It sure does. The key issue about bombing is actually having something to bomb. Sounds simple, I know, but we haven’t figured that out yet. I made this point on the night of 911: He spent a hundred thousand dollars to cause a hundred billion dollars in damage, we’ll spend a hundred billion dollars to cause a hundred thousand dollars in damage. I was talking about Afghanistan, and it turns out, I wasn’t cynical enough. We spent more and only killed people. We wanted to bomb them into the stone age, but they were already there. It’s like what happened to the people who were living on the coast near Chennai in the tsunami. Their houses were built out of random discarded building materials. The tsunami washed all that away, but it deposited a bunch of random discarded building materials. It took a day, but they were right back where they started.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:55 am
“An dissident movement just isn’t going to be able to be able to blow up tanks and airplanes.”
What?? All these guns I bought under the sign saying “GET ‘EM WHILE YOU CAN!!!” won’t protect me from the jackbooted government thugs?!
…Dammit!!!
(Well, that was a waste of ten grand.)
June 18th, 2009 at 1:19 am
fostert
Great stuff.
Since Operation Goodwood the United States has spent 27 trillion dollars on its military. If you include our nuclear arsenal and failed space weapons, which I think you must, we must have spent at least a quarter of that $27 trillion on high altitude activities designed to destroy various things from 20,000 feet on up.
So that is, what, about $7 trillion spent, give or take, on high altitude death weapons? And the only example I could think of where it was effectively used since July of 1944 was the first Gulf War.
So, extrapolating, we spent $7 trillion to kill 50,000 Iraqi soldiers. I’m not going to do the math, too many zeros, but that is a lot of money per enemy combatant killed.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:40 am
A correlary too obvious for this thread is therefore Obama should not denounce Ahmedinejad and Khameini. I think many liberal bloggers over-estimate the power of Iranian anger over US support of the Shah. That was long ago, and the currency of history is subjective.
However, I would guess that Iranian generals remember, although for all I know, they are more angry over the Reagan administrations tilt towards support of Saddam Hussein.
I’m pretty sure Obama is pretty popular in Iran, but not so much among the people whose decisions will decide if the revolution succeeds.
June 18th, 2009 at 7:17 am
It certainly didn’t pay off in Myanmar. And it wouldn’t pay off here. There may very well be no country in which the security forces woudl mow down their own citizens as quickly and with as much glee as the good old U. S. of A.
June 18th, 2009 at 7:49 am
Here’s an empirical refutation of the mistaken belief that nonviolent resistance doesn’t work: Between 1900 and 2006, violent resistance campaigns succeeded in 26% of cases, and nonviolent resistance campaigns succeeded in 53% of cases.
While I’m certainly not saying that nonviolent resistance doesn’t work, an empirical study like this has to take into account the particular circumstances, and especially the grasp on power of the regimes at which the protests are directed, in each and every case (maybe it does that, I haven’t read it).
To give an example: there were two major uprisings in the history of the GDR – one in 1953 and one in 1989. In 1953 there was violence from both sides, in 1989 there was not. 1953 the GDR regime was quite strong and backed up by the overwhelming might of the USSR, in 1989 it was neither. The violent uprising of 1953 was partially successful in prompting some reforms, even though the protesters were contained with massive violence. In 1989 the peaceful protests were successful, but due to a large part to the fact that the GDR was finished anyway.
June 18th, 2009 at 8:40 am
Y’all are nucking futs!
You’re comparing a foreign invasion with civil dissent! That’s about as apples-to-oranges as it gets. The Viet Cong’s campaign to drive various invaders out was, of course, violent, because you had a relatively unified local population trying to get the Americans to go back home. Martin Luther King, like the Iranians, like Ghandi, was trying to *unify a divided population*! It’s a completely different thing, requiring completely different tactics. But y’all are just too caught up in jerking off over AK-47s to notice that you’ve wandered miles off topic.
Sheesh!
June 18th, 2009 at 8:44 am
I think this point puts our second amendment debate in context.
Guns for hunting or self defense is one thing. Guns to establish ‘militias’ and fight tyranny is not plausible given the disparity in the means of violence between an individual and the state.
June 18th, 2009 at 9:10 am
Guns to establish ‘militias’ and fight tyranny is not plausible given the disparity in the means of violence between an individual and the state.
Really? The Black Panthers might disagree. California legislature certainly did disagree – when the Panthers marched into the state capitol with loaded guns in 1972. Now, that was a beautiful thing.
June 18th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Opps, sorry – 1967.
Anyway, this is how the civil rights movement had won, not because someone made a nice speech.
June 18th, 2009 at 9:51 am
Fuzzy,
The Vietnam war was at least as much a civil war and a social revolution as an anticolonial war. The North Vietnamese and their peasant allies in the south weren’t just fighting to get the French and Americans out, they were also fighting against the landlords, capitalists, and the elites. And I suspect they hated Thieu and Ky rather more than they hated Lyndon Johnson.
And there are plenty of examples of violent resistance in the context of purely domestic civil wars. Castro started out with only 12 men and managed to take down a government- and he wasn’t fighting a foreign occupier but rather a domestic tyranny.
June 18th, 2009 at 10:39 am
abb1 –
I agree that the impact the of Black Panthers with guns was powerful but guns or gun battles with the state did not win civil rights.
And, in the context of beatings and shootings in Iran, I wonder what impact self defense with guns would have. What if students had barricaded themselves in dorms and defended themselves with guns. That would escalate the amount of violence used by the state and the state, as Matt points out, has a greater arsenal of weapons.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
It’s not gun battles necessarily, it’s the feeling that things are getting out of control and it can easily get worse, much worse. It’s much easier to achieve with guns than without.
Anyway, like I said in #3 it’s also a function of how confident the establishment is.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Jesus endorses the Law
Matthew 5: 17-20
Jesus instructs followers to pay taxes
Matthew 22: 17-21
Jesus instructs followers to obey the pharisees
Matthew 23: 2-3
Jesus disavows resistance
Matthew 26: 50-56
Paul instructs followers to submit to governments
Romans 13: 1-7
Paul instructs slaves to submit
1 Timothy 6:1
Titus 2: 9
Peter instructs slaves to submit
1 Peter 2: 18
Pilate declares Jesus innocent, kills him anyway
Matthew 27: 24
The gospels depict Jesus as dvine, hence having ultimate authority over everything, but his life on Earth is preordained theatre and the various authorities merely actors in it. His battle with the pharisees, priests, and sadducees is a theological one, the Romans are depicted as largely disinterested in Jesus and his antics. The interpretation of Jesus that developed in the Jesus Christ Superstar era, that of a long-haired rebel and his hippy followers, is quaint but a steaming load.
Acts of “civil disobedience”, such as overturning the tables of the moneylenders, are reserved for the divine actor and concern religious, not civil matters. Mortals are plainly implored to be demure and pacifistic. Paul minces no words and unequivocally instructs followers to obey earthly authority.
June 18th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
[...] Technology’s getting all the attention and credit for helping to facilitate the Green Revolution in Iran, but Matt Yglesias points out another essential: [...]
June 18th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Nonviolence is even more powerful than you give it credit for. Nonviolence isn’t merely a tactic; it’s the most powerful way to fight against an oppressive regime. When you can look your oppressor in the eye and say:
you will have thereby disarmed your oppressor. This was the heart of the wisdom that King and Gandhi shared with us.
I want to emphasize that I’m addressing internal struggles against oppressive regimes. Ruling over a country generally requires that you have subjects to rule over. This imposes a limit on how far any but the most insane rulers (Pol Pot comes to mind here) would go to maintain their hold on power. I don’t advocate nonviolence as a means to fight against aggressive foreign powers.
June 18th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
@80, I suspect, though, that shooting your oppressor in the head would send a stronger message than looking him in the eye and saying some words.
June 18th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
@81: Behind every strongman, there’s a bunch of would-be strongmen hoping that someone will do just what you suggest. You could try to take ‘em all down, but then you start looking a lot more like the people you’re trying to defeat. Your message winds up getting pretty badly diluted if you go that route.
June 18th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Fair enough. But how does looking in the eye and saying words is different? Suppose these people in Iran manage to make their guy president by looking and saying. But in 6 months time they will hate him just the same as they do the old guy now. If they took the opportunity to shoot some thugs today, at least the new guy would’ve been afraid (albeit just for a while) to piss them off.
June 18th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
The new guy may not be a lot better than the old one, but he’ll take care to be at least somewhat better. If the people can unite to disarm and depose one despot, they can do so again. Any Iranian who remembers 1979 will know that lesson well.
June 18th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Steve S.,
Wrongo. Jesus also said, “To him who overcometh, and who keeps My works until the end, to him will I give power over the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, and shatter them as shards of pottery, and I shall give him the morning star” (Revelation 2:26-28). hardly the voice of pacifism or quietism there. And the beloved disciple also tells us “Come out of Babylon” (Revelation 18:4), i.e. to revoke our allegiance to the forces of political evil. And he also says, speaking of political evil under the figure of Babylon, that is Rome, “Reward her as she has rewarded you” (Revelation 18:6) i.e. our resistance to political evil may require us to meet force with force. A case for revolution against unjust authority can be found in the books of the Maccabees, as well as on the basis of natural law. As Aquinas and subsequent commentators put it, when St. Paul counseled Christians to obey earthly powers, he meant only those earthly powers who rule justly. For as St. Augustine puts it, an unjust law is no law at all.
June 18th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Sorry, Hector, your use of scripture is obtuse, to be generous. The Revelation is speaking of an unspecified future time when Jesus/God will have assumed control of things. It does not command “civil disobedience” to its intended audience but instead promises believers justice and salvation in, as I said, an unspecified future time, brought about by divine will. The Revelation is, in fact, loaded with allegory and metaphor for the purpose of flying under the Roman radar rather than inciting resistance. But nice try.
The Maccabees might be a case for revolution if it were not excluded from a good many Bibles and the plain words attributed to Jesus and Paul weren’t in contravention to such a thing.
A laughable interpretation. Romans 13 makes plain that ALL governments are sanctioned by God. Go ahead, read it. Then read it again. Read the other passages I referenced. Cogitate the plain words and then demonstrate (without yanking passages grossly out of context, as you did above) that Christianity counsels resistance to authority. Take your time.
Needless to say, the question we are debating here is not how we in the 21st century should relate to governments but rather Christian doctrine. Contrary to sentimental and fallacious modern interpretations, early Christianity took it for granted that the civil powers of the day could not and should not be resisted and were of little importance in the grand scheme of things anyway. The Revelation, for instance, contrary to your insinuations above, was more or less a pep talk to believers who were under the yoke of repression and could do absolutely nothing about it.
Please try harder to understand things as they are, not as you wish them to be.
June 18th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Re: laughable interpretation. Romans 13 makes plain that ALL governments are sanctioned by God. Go ahead, read it.
Steve S.,
That laughable interpretation comes straight from the pen of Aquinas. Aquinas says explicitly that Romans 13 was referring only to just governments, not to unjust ones. I rather think he was smarter than you.
It’s true that early Christianity was pacifist, but Augustine points out that a pacifist ethic was appropriate to the first few centuries because the Empire had not been converted. Once the Empire was Christianized, and once it became apparent that Christ was not coming back anytime soon, it became necessary for Christians to take responsibility for fighting evil, both as agents of a just state and, when necessary, in opposition to an unjust state. Our understanding of spiritual truth evolves, as Gregory Nazianzen pointed out in the context of the doctrine of the Trinity.
As for Revelation, St. John explicitly addresses the people of God when he says “Reward [Babylon] as she rewarded you”. The defeat of Babylon (i.e. political evil) is not simply something that Christ will accomplish at the end of time, it is something that St. John commands us to participate in. And Revelation is not merely a snapshot of the end of time, but a synopsis of world history as a whole. That is why it skips back and forth between the end of time, the fall of Rome, the angelic war in heaven, the conception and birth of Christ, and various other episodes.
Revolution against unjust authority is either always against natural law (i.e. a sin) or it is sometimes licit. God cannot command anything evil, since His nature is to be perfectly good, as Anselm puts it. Now in Maccabees, Revelation, and parts of the Old Testament, God commands us to revolt against unjust and evil powers in specific cases. That means that revolution is not intrinsically evil, and therefore in some circusmtances it can be morally licict and in fact required.
Again, Steve S., I think I will put my trust in St. John the Divine rather than in you.
June 18th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Aquinas on Romans 13:
“But, as we have already said, authority may fail to derive from God for two reasons: either because of the way in which authority has been obtained, or in consequence of the use which is made of it.
” There are two ways in which the first case may occur. Either because of a defect in the person, if he is unworthy; or because of some defect in the way itself by which power was acquired, if, for example, through violence, or simony or some other illegal method. The first defect is not such as to impede the acquisition of legitimate authority; and since authority derives always, from a formal point of view, from God (and it is this which produces the duty of obedience), their subjects are always obliged to obey such superiors, however unworthy they may be. But the second defect prevents the establishment of any just authority: for whoever possesses himself of power by violence does not truly become lord or master. Therefore it is permissible, when occasion offers, for a person to reject such authority; except in the case that it subsequently became legitimate, either through public consent or through the intervention of higher authority.
“With regard to the abuse of authority, this also may come about in two ways. First, when what is ordered by an authority is opposed to the object for which that authority was constituted (if, for example, some sinful action is commanded or one which is contrary to virtue, when it is precisely for the protection and fostering of virtue that authority is instituted). In such a case, not only is there no obligation to obey the authority, but one is obliged to disobey it, as did the holy martyrs who suffered death rather than obey the impious commands of tyrants. Secondly, when those who bear such authority command things which exceed the competence of such authority; as, for example, when a master demands payment from a servant which the latter is not bound to make, and other similar cases. In this instance the subject is free to obey or disobey.”
June 19th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Hector, nobody gives a shit what Aquinas, Augustine, or Anselm thought about anything. Their primary contributions to western civilization are failed arguments for the existence of God and extreme misogyny. If you are moved to quote their ancient and medieval droolings again, don’t bother.
Your interpretation of the Revelation is simply bizarre. The retribution which believers are entitled to plainly takes place at an unspecified future time and at the auspices of divine agents, as the surrounding text makes clear. Claiming that it implores resistance to authority is simply you projecting your own wishes onto a text that says nothing of the sort.
Please read these words:
“Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.”
What do those words mean? Who said them, and what was his importance to the founding of Christianity?
Then please read the other references I cited, and then explain what they mean. Take your time. Oh, and use your own words, not those of medieval corpses.