An Observation about Republican and Democrat Forums

[Bfgrn]

I am all for education you moron. I am all against violence. So was the great Martin Luther King Jr.

Even after his home was bombed in Montgomery, King told blacks:

“Don’t get your weapons. He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword. Remember that is what God said. We are not advocating violence. We want to love our enemies. I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them. Love them and let them know you love them.”

King could see that there was only one path to freedom for African-Americans:

"We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force."

The millions of African-Americans who engaged in nonviolent action to obtain their rights as democratic citizens during the civil rights movement rose to such “majestic heights” time and time again.

He preached against using violence OFFENSIVELY. Have you never heard of the Deacons of Defense and Justice?

Deacons for Defense and Justice - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Watch the first 10 seconds of this video:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwueChZUgf8]NO GUNS FOR NEGROES 2of2 THE RACIST ROOTS OF GUN CONTROL - YouTube[/ame]

The sad thing is that you already knew this. Let this be a lesson to every black viewing this thread that the Democrats will lie to you in order to disarm you, an armed man is a citizen, a disarmed man is a subject.

Dr. King preached against ANY and ALL violence.

Even after his home was bombed in Montgomery, King told blacks:

“Don’t get your weapons. He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword. Remember that is what God said. We are not advocating violence. We want to love our enemies. I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them. Love them and let them know you love them.”

You are lying to promote your Timothy McVeigh agenda.

 

[The2ndAmendment]

I am all for education you moron. I am all against violence. So was the great Martin Luther King Jr.

Even after his home was bombed in Montgomery, King told blacks:

“Don’t get your weapons. He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword. Remember that is what God said. We are not advocating violence. We want to love our enemies. I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them. Love them and let them know you love them.”

King could see that there was only one path to freedom for African-Americans:

"We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force."

The millions of African-Americans who engaged in nonviolent action to obtain their rights as democratic citizens during the civil rights movement rose to such “majestic heights” time and time again.

He preached against using violence OFFENSIVELY. Have you never heard of the Deacons of Defense and Justice?

Deacons for Defense and Justice - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Watch the first 10 seconds of this video:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwueChZUgf8]NO GUNS FOR NEGROES 2of2 THE RACIST ROOTS OF GUN CONTROL - YouTube[/ame]

The sad thing is that you already knew this. Let this be a lesson to every black viewing this thread that the Democrats will lie to you in order to disarm you, an armed man is a citizen, a disarmed man is a subject.

Dr. King preached against ANY and ALL violence.

Even after his home was bombed in Montgomery, King told blacks:

“Don’t get your weapons. He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword. Remember that is what God said. We are not advocating violence. We want to love our enemies. I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them. Love them and let them know you love them.”

You are lying to promote your Timothy McVeigh agenda.

Wait, are you denying that Martin Luther King hired the Deacons for Defense and Justice (to protect peaceful assembly from the KKK), and didn't' purchase his own sidearm for his own protection?

(I think a there's going to be a new thread in the Flame Zone soon!)

 

[Intense]

Martin Luther King, like Thoreau, like Madison, studied the teachings of John Locke, specifically, Non-Violent Civil Disobedience.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

I want to state upfront that I am a libertarian.

...

enough said


I am a liberal and I get banned from almost all left wing and right wing message boards/forums. I have no idea what a Democratic or Republican forum looks like.

 

[The2ndAmendment]

The Truth is Marching On:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKMi023Ofro][FULL VERSION] Black conservative leaders discuss how the NRA was created to protect freed slaves - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Bfgrn]

He preached against using violence OFFENSIVELY. Have you never heard of the Deacons of Defense and Justice?

Deacons for Defense and Justice - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Watch the first 10 seconds of this video:
NO GUNS FOR NEGROES 2of2 THE RACIST ROOTS OF GUN CONTROL - YouTube

The sad thing is that you already knew this. Let this be a lesson to every black viewing this thread that the Democrats will lie to you in order to disarm you, an armed man is a citizen, a disarmed man is a subject.

Dr. King preached against ANY and ALL violence.

Even after his home was bombed in Montgomery, King told blacks:

“Don’t get your weapons. He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword. Remember that is what God said. We are not advocating violence. We want to love our enemies. I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them. Love them and let them know you love them.”

You are lying to promote your Timothy McVeigh agenda.

Wait, are you denying that Martin Luther King hired the Deacons for Defense and Justice (to protect peaceful assembly from the KKK), and didn't' purchase his own sidearm for his own protection?

(I think a there's going to be a new thread in the Flame Zone soon!)

You are about to be schooled by Dr. Martin Luther King himself. Don't let the flames consume you McVeigh.


Nonviolence: The Only Road to Freedom

Martin Luther King, Jr.
May 4, 1966

Excerpts:

The year 1966 brought with it the first public challenge to the philosophy and strategy of nonviolence from within the ranks of the civil rights movement. Resolutions of self-defense and Black Power sounded forth from our friends and brothers. At the same time riots erupted in several major cities. Inevitably a like was made between the two phenomena though movement leadership continued to deny any implications of violence in the concept of Black Power.

The nation’s press heralded these incidents as an end of the Negro’s reliance on nonviolence as a means of achieving freedom. Articles appeared on "The Plot to Get Whitey," and, "Must Negroes fight back?" and one had the impression that a serious movement was underway to lead the Negro to freedom through the use of violence.

Indeed, there was much talk of violence. It was the same talk we have heard on the fringes of the nonviolent movement for the past ten years. It was the talk of fearful men, saying that they would not join the nonviolent movement because they would not remain nonviolent if attacked. Now the climate had shifted so that it was even more popular to talk of violence, but in spite of the talk of violence there emerged no action in this direction. One reporter pointed out in a recent New Yorker article, that the fact that Beckwith, Price, Rainey, and Collie Leroy Wilkins remain alive is a living testimony to the fact that the Negro remains nonviolent. And if this is not enough, a mere check of the statistics of casualties in the recent riots shows that a vast majority of persons killed in riots are Negroes. All the reports of sniping in Los Angeles’s expressways did not produce a single casualty. The young demented white student at the University of Texas has shown what damage a sniper can do when he is serious. In fact, this one young man killed more people in one day than all the Negroes have killed in all the riots in all the cities since the Harlem riots of 1964. This must raise a serious question about the violent intent of the Negro, for certainly there are many ex-GI’s within our ghettos, and no small percentage of those recent migrants from the South have demonstrated some proficiency hunting squirrels and rabbits.

I can only conclude that the Negro, even in his bitterest moments, is not intent on killing white men to be free. This does not mean that the Negro is a saint who abhors violence. Unfortunately, a check of the hospitals in any Negro community on any Saturday night will make you painfully aware of the violence within the Negro community. Hundreds of victims of shootings and cutting lie bleeding in the emergency rooms, but there is seldom if ever a white person who is the victim of Negro hostility.

I have talked with many persons in the ghettos of the North who argue eloquently for the use of violence. But I observed none of them in the mobs that rioted in Chicago. I have heard the street-corner preachers in Harlem and in Chicago’s Washington Park, but in spite of the bitterness preached and the hatred espoused, none of them has ever been able to start a riot. So far, only the police through their fears and prejudice have goaded our people to riot. And once the riot starts, only the police or the National Guard have been able to put an end to them. This demonstrates that there violent eruptions are unplanned, uncontrollable, temper tantrums brought on by the long-neglected poverty, humiliation, oppression and exploitation. Violence as a strategy for social change in America is nonexistent. All the sound and fury seems but the posturing of cowards whose bold talk produces no action and signifies nothing.

I am convinced that for practical as well as moral reasons, nonviolence offers the only road to freedom for my people. In violent warfare, one must be prepared to face ruthlessly the fact that there will be casualties by the thousands. In Vietnam, the United States has evidently decided that it is willing to slaughter millions, sacrifice some two hundred thousand men and twenty billion dollars a year to secure the freedom of some fourteen million Vietnamese. This is to fight a war on Asian soil, where Asians are in the majority. Anyone leading a violent conflict must be willing to make a similar assessment regarding the possible casualties to a minority population confronting a well-armed, wealthy majority with a fanatical right wing that is capable of exterminating the entire black population and which would not hesitate such an attempt if the survival of the white Western materialism were at stake.

Arguments that the American Negro is a part of a world which is two-thirds colored and that there will come a day when the oppressed people of color will rise together to throw off the yoke of white oppression are at least fifty years away from being relevant. There is no colored nation, including China, which now shows even the potential of leading a revolution of color in any international proportion. Ghana, Zambia, Tanzania and Nigeria are fighting their own battles for survival against poverty, illiteracy and the subversive influence of neocolonialism, so that they offer no hope to Angola, Southern Rhodesia and South Africa, and much less to the American Negro.

The hard cold facts of racial life in the world today indicated that the hope of the people of color in the world may well rest on the American Negro and his ability to reform the structures of racist imperialism from within and thereby turn the technology and wealth of the West to the task of liberating the world from want.

This is no time for romantic illusions about freedom and empty philosophical debate. This is a time for action. What is needed is a strategy for change, a tactical program which will bring the Negro into the mainstream of American life as quickly as possible. So far, this has only been offered by the nonviolent movement.

Our record of achievement through nonviolent action is already remarkable. The dramatic social changes which have been made across the South are unmatched in the annals of history. Montgomery, Albany, Birmingham and Selena have paved the way for untold progress. Even more remarkable is the fact that this progress occurred with a minimum of human sacrifice and loss of life.

Not a single person has been killed in a nonviolent demonstration. The bombings of the 16th Street Baptist Church occurred several months after demonstrations stopped. Rev. James Reeb, Mrs. Viola Liuzzo and Jimmie Lee Jackson were all murdered at night following demonstrations. And fewer people have been killed in ten years of action across the South than were killed in three nights of rioting in Watts. No similar changes have occurred without infinitely more suffering, whether it be Gandhi’s drive for independence in India or any African nation’s struggle for independence.

The Question of Self-Defense

There are many people who very honestly raise the question of self-defense. This must be placed in perspective. It goes without saying that people will protect their homes. This is a right guaranteed by the Constitution and respected even in the worst areas of the South. But the mere protection of one’s home and person against assault by lawless night riders does not provide any positive approach to the fears and conditions which produce violence. There must be some program for establishing law. Our experience in places like Savannah and Macon, Georgia, has been that a drive which registers Negroes to vote can do more to provide protection of the law and respect for Negroes by even racist sheriffs than anything we have seen.

In a nonviolent demonstration, self-defense must be approached from quite another perspective. One must remember that the cause of the demonstration is some exploitation or form of oppression that has made it necessary for men of courage and good will do demonstrate against evil. For example, a demonstration against the evil of de facto school segregation is based on the awareness that a child’s mind is crippled daily by inadequate educational opportunity. The demonstrator agrees that is better for him to suffer publicly for a short time to end the crippling evil of school segregation than to have generation after generation of children suffer in ignorance.

In such a demonstration, the point is made that schools are inadequate. This is the evil to which one seeks to point; anything else detracts from that point and interferes with confrontation of the primary evil against which one demonstrates. Of course, no one wants to suffer and be hurt. But it is more important to get at the cause than to be safe. It is better to shed a little blood from a blow on the head or a rock thrown by an angry mob than to have children by the thousands grow up reading at a fifth- or sixth-grade reading level.

It is always amusing to me when a Negro man says that he can’t demonstrate with us because if someone hit him he would fight back. Here is a man whose children are being plagued by rats and roaches, whose wife is robbed daily at overpriced ghetto food stores, who himself is working for about two-thirds the pay of a white person doing a similar job and with similar skills, and in spite of all this daily suffering it takes someone spitting on him and calling him a ****** to make him want to fight.

Conditions are such for Negroes in America that all Negroes ought to be fighting aggressively. It is as ridiculous for a Negro to raise the question of self-defense in relation to nonviolence as it is for a soldier on the battlefield to say his is not going to take any risks. He is there because he believes that the freedom of his country is worth the risk of his life. The same is true of the nonviolent demonstrator. He sees the misery of his people so clearly that he volunteers to suffer in their behalf and put an end to their plight.

Furthermore, it is extremely dangerous to organize a movement around self-defense. The line between defensive violence and aggressive or retaliatory violence is a fine line indeed. When violence is tolerated even as a means of self-defense there is a grave danger that in the fervor of emotion the main fight will be lost over the question of self-defense.

When my home was bombed in 1955 in Montgomery, many men wanted to retaliate, to place an armed guard on my home. But the issue there was not my life, but whether Negroes would achieve first-class treatment on the city’s buses. Had we become distracted by the question of my safety we would have lost the moral offensive and sunk to the level of our oppressors.

I must continue by faith or it is too great a burden to bear and violence, even in self-defense, creates more problems than it solves. Only a refusal to hate or kill can put an end to the chain of violence in the world and lead us toward a community where men can live together without fear. Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.






Did civil rights need Deacons for Defense?