“The notion of passive resistance as “non-violence” assumes an inherent right to be where you are. But trespass upon property, public or private, is a violence all its own. Refusal to obey the law, disregard for the rights of neighbors, and refusal to mind fences is indicative of menace. Proper government would end it posthaste.”
Good Lord, can we never have a presentation from the right that doesn’t wander all over the countryside? Why did this get thrown in there? Passive resistance–if it’s truly passive–is non-violent, but not therefore lawful, and assumes nothing but that if it provokes a violent response, the violent one will be censured. Ghandi and Martin Luther King would have gotten nowhere outside of former British colonies and not in all of them–as could be seen in Tianamen Square. The belief that we must not obey “unjust” laws, fostered by the experience of the 2nd World War, is one to which all Americans and some of our cousins in the UK subscribe, I guess because we have such an attachment to the idea of “just” laws. I think that local governments are using this “occupy” thing to embarrass political opponents–but I think it wouldn’t be happening if “Wall Street” hadn’t been in the business of using social biases to sell stuff to the point that thinking in “consumers” has been strongly discouraged. I feel Wall Street’s getting what it deserves with this mess; and it’s not government’s job to save it from the result of its own excesses.
