Dissident Veteran For Peace: Lessons of Athens, TN

Dissident Veteran For Peace

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." —Alexis de Tocquevile. Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter XV.

With a nod to the Most Rev. Dom Helder Camara: When I support Palestinians some call me an 'anti-Semite', when I try to explain why I stand in solidarity with Palestinians they call me a Nazi.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." —Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.)

"... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984, part 3, ch. 3 by George Orwell.

"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, ' "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace,' ..." —The Rev. William Sloane Coffin. "Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword."

Friday, January 25, 2013

Lessons of Athens, TN

In "Some Lessons of 'Unintended Consequences' " I wrote:

I also learned about the inspiring story of the Battle of Athens from Ross' book. In 1946, WW II vets and other locals successfully took up arms against a corrupt, local Democratic Party regime in Athens, TN, the county seat of McMinn County.

In a world where so many people are passive and disengaged from the major questions of political and social life, I expect I will always find righteous resistance to be inspirational. Yet, I am also keenly aware, that violent resistance is almost always a blind alley, which typically empowers not necessarily the kindest or most just among us but rather those who are adept at inflicting or orchestrating violence.

I was reminded of this recently while reading some of the post-Newtown massacre gun rights discussions. Unintended Consequences is, of course, an ardently pro-gun novel and it is therefore no coincidence that the story of the Battle of Athens appears on a lot of pro-gun web sites. While I was unsuccessful in verifying the provenance of an op-ed concerning the Athens revolt attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, I did find an article in the New York Times (Jan. 12, 1947; p. 6) entitled "Athens, Tenn., Regime Set Up by GI's Falls." It reports:

The unofficial organization of the veterans is torn by dissension.

Four of the five leaders of the veterans movement declared in an open letter yesterday:

"We abolished one machine only to replace it with another and more powerful one in the making."

Labels: guns, nonviolence, politics, resistance, violence