In Defense of Violence
As I tooted earlier today, I've got a real problem with the idea that "violence never solves anything". The need to challenge conventional wisdom aside, giving this bullshit notion even a few seconds of thought should be enough to invalidate it in the mind of a sane person. Before I defend this position to the ground, as always, a qualifier: I'm not for a second suggesting that violence should be anything but the last resort in a given situation. Heaven knows that this type of thinking has gotten people, countries and civilizations into a bigger pickle than they had anticipated before pushing the button, initiating the assault or thrown the first punch. I'm merely suggesting that, after all available options have been exhausted, violence and the threat of violence can be an extremely effective tool in dealing with an already-undesirable situation. A few short examples:
- Americans went to war to gain their independence from Great Britain. An awesome number of people lost their lives, but the end result is enjoyed tacitly by Americans every single day.
- Innumerable examples of the canonical schoolyard bully getting his ass handed to him by a would-be weakling or oppressed party. If said bully has anything more than gravel between his ears (a questionable assumption, I admit), he'll probably take his little terrorism routine elsewhere or, hopefully, take stock of his whole situation and rethink all that crap about being a badass and taking what you want.
- A hostage-taker is killed in the act of taking hostages, thereby quelling his little mini reign of terror.
Comments 2 Comments
1) Can there ever be an opportunity for peace?
2) How do you reconcile your perspective against the Beatitudes?
3) Where is the opportunity for your faith to be expressed through your actions when violence comes knocking?
Violence does make some problems go away. It also opens the opportunity for a cycle of violence that can never be resolved by applying additional violence.
Peacemaking is hard work--more difficult than resorting to violence, so I understand why folks fall back on violence. I'm just surprised that you fell into the trap, too.
To take your examples:
1) The Revolutionary War: Despite the myth, the Revolutionary War basically shifted power from a European aristocracy to an American aristocracy. If you were poor, black, Native American, or female, not a whole lot changed for you -- and for many of them, actually got worse. There's a reason we almost immediately have farmer and taxpayer revolts on the close of the Revolutionary War. Most of the good stuff that makes up American society came along much later (e.g. democracy as you and I understand it was conceptualized largely during the Jackson and Wilson presidencies) and was the result not of violence but of cultural, social, and ideological action.
2) Perfect example of where violence can prevent negative change, once all options have been exhausted. Positive change would be the bully gives up bullying and becomes a decent person -- much more likely is the bully picks a easier target.
3) POTENTIALLY the same (preventing negative change, i.e. the situation escalating) although I'm pretty sure that standard practice when dealing with hostage-takers is *not* to use violence, since by its very nature violence is unruly, chaotic, and unpredictable and puts the hostages in as much or more danger than the hostage-taker.
I would say that violence ENDS some problems, it doesn't solve them. Kill a murderer, there are still murders. Overthrow a dictator, by and large the same situation arises in his wake (look at Uganda from independence until the early '80s). Humiliate a bully, and you might end the pain for yourself, but others still suffer. Even in WWII, it's hard to say that if the Western world hadn't cheered Hitler on in the '30s, we wouldn't have been able to avoid the atrocious violence of the '40s (between concentration camps and the war on the Eastern front, some 20-30 MILLION lives were lost!)