NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/soc/singles/30758

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-15 | 4.2 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Charles R. Martin)
Newsgroups: soc.singles
Subject: Re: Violence vs. nonviolence
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 15 Nov 92 23:25:07 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
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Sender: [e-mail]
Organization: UNC Department of Computer Science
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In-reply-to: [e-mail]'s message of 11 Nov 92 23:36:23 GMT

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mysti) writes:

   In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Charles R. Martin) writes:

   >   his power own power against him, and flip him far enough away for you
   >   to get up and run?
   >
   >But ... you've just contradicted the apparent pacifist intention of your
   >original posting.

   No, actually, I would consider changing the force of someone's onward
   charge a little different from, say breaking their arm with their own
   forward momentum.

Demonstrating thereby that you've never done either one.  It is a little
hard to demonstrate on little blue letters, but the motion is much the
same, and oddly enough, tossing them freely away actually raises the
chance of injury.  (Notice that sport judo *rarely* just throws someone
through the air.)  To claim that throwing someone *isn't* a violent act
suggests that you're either naive, ignorant, or willfully not seeing the
point.

   But you completely ignored the other suggestions, most
   of which are sufficient to stop violence before it happens, in ordinary
   circumstances.

Hardly -- however, it doesn't much matter if I -did-, since it was your
point originally.  Convince me that throwing someone isn't violent
first.  Tell you what -- drop down to your local aikido dojo and let the
teacher throw you a few times.

   >   That's a pretty speculative position, at best.
   >
   >Not much of a history student, eh?  It can't be *proven* of course, at
   >least without parallel universes, but it's a quite common argument that
   >the combination of the punitive form of the Versailles Treaty, the
   >impotence of the League of Nations, and the build-down of French and
   >British forces while permitting a German build-up in violation of the
   >treaty are precisely the reasons the Second World War was even
   >*possible*.  (I still think Winston Churchill's account of the war is
   >the best one.  Certainly it's the best-informed one.)

   Actually, the history I've been exposed to suggested nothing about the
   US and British disarmament.

Your ignorance isn't my concern.

   The lengths to which the Versailles Treaty went to keep Britain
   unarmed is a commonly accepted contributing cause.

Actually, the treaty permitted both France and the UK to remain
*substantially* greater military forces than they did; thus the treaty
itself had *nothing* to do with the disarmament of the UK and France.

   I have seen nothing to suggest that british/us disarmament (to what
   extent did we in fact disarm, before WWI and WWII?)

The US had a *very* small standing army before WWI, largely involved in
the Indian Wars, the Spanish-American War and some mild imperialism.  We
immediately dropped a standing army after WWI, which built up *slightly*
before Pearl Harbor.

   prompted the attacks
   on western and eastern europe in either war. The US was an issue only
   after those maneuvers were begun....

I think you'll notice that I didn't refer to the US in any way in the
stuff to which you respond: only Britain and France.  Thus the US is a
straw man anyway.
--
        Charles R. Martin/(Charlie)/[e-mail]
     Dept. of Computer Science/CB #3175 UNC-CH/Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175
        3611 University Dr #13M/Durham, NC 27707/[phone]
     "Oh God, please help me be civil in tongue, pure in thought, and able
      to resist the temptation to laugh uncontrollably.  Amen." -- Rob T