Paul's Perambulations a personal blog

It’s been a busy week. On Sunday Fran and I were invited for brunch with a group of young people who are seriously commited to living the peace testimony (Circle of Hope Church, Shalom House), to discuss war tax resistance.  We had had a meeting previously. Two of them are prepared to be civil disobedient for the first time this year, as war tax resisters.  Another identifies himself as a war tax resister by living under the taxable income. On Tuesday April 15 I mailed our taxes, attaching our letter of explanation that for conscience’ sake we had not paid some of our taxes.  We had instead given that amount of refused tax to UNICEF for the children of the world.  Next, I distributed about 80 of WRL’s pie charts to tax payers in front of the Bryn Mawr Post Office.  The pie chart, based on published figures of the United States budget, shows how roughly half of the federal budget (our 1040 tax) is devoted to war and related military expenditures.  That same Tuesday afternoon the Republican candidate for President, Senator McCain, spoke at Villanova.  I and about ten other Villanovans for Peace held a very visible public demonstration as a few thousand students and townspeople passed directly in our path on their way to the Pavilion. That was the opportunity for me to distribute all my remaining pie charts. Later, I was interviewed by WFMZ (Allentown TV) and appeared briefly on their 10 pm news broadcast that night (click link for broadcast).  A good day. Last Tuesday we (Villanovans for Peace) sponsored the AFSC Boots display on campus. This display includes combat boots representing all the PA deaths in Iraq, as well as many large posters and informative handouts.  The display was set up in the middle of campus, and many students passed through it.    

Link to news video.

The first two links below relate directly to the public protest on Rosenstrasse Street in 1943 Nazi Berlin. Nathan Stoltzfus has written a book about the demonstration, and it was also the subject of a recent movie.  There are also links below to material that describe another successful instance of peaceful resistance to the Nazi regime in WWII.  This relates to the unsuccessful attempt to organize the Norwegian educational system along Nazi lines.  There was mass non-cooperation and the Nazi government gave in.  Gene Sharp has written extensively about nonviolent resistance and non-cooperation as a practical approach for civilian defense.  In the way that he envisions this, it has never been tried.  Instances have always been quite spontaneous and poorly organized.  He suggests that we would need to spend billions of dollars (but still much less than we pay for war) and that many lives might well be lost (but still many fewer lives than would be lost in the war alternative) for the full implementation of such a plan.  So it is an imperfect solution, but so is war.

Public demonstration to successfully save Jewish husbands:

http://www.rinr.fsu.edu/fallwinter97/features/hitler.html

http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~rar4619/rosenstrasse.html

Material about successful resistance to Nazi plans for Norway’s school system is particularly relevant:   http://www.carolmoore.net/articles/nv-action-article.html    More instances of successful peace actions are in the links that follow:

“The fact is that every war suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that it continues, because such things as individual liberty and a truthful press are simply not compatible with military efficiency.”

— George Orwell,   Homage to Catalonia, 1938

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”  – Voltaire                                                        

“The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.”

“The art of leadership…consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention.” 

Adolf Hitler (both from Mein Kampf)

This was my posted response to a NYTmes article about the proliferation of hidden cameras in stores (In Bid to Sway Sales, Cameras Track Shoppers) and how this has become acceptable as good business practice:

I sometimes laugh (or cry?) when I recall the concern folks once had about the future as depicted in Brave New World and 1984. That was dictatorship, control, and the Soviet Union (for the ‘50s and ‘60s). Now it’s happening here, and most everyone takes it for granted. A half century ago, there would have been outrage. How truly these books now appear to be predicting our future. Details differ (changes in technology and where the power resides), but the trajectory is unmistakable (post #49). 

Here are some other ideas for consideration:   

We are citizens of the world, and our country is this earth. 

“America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.”  John Updike

“Yes, we love peace, but we are not willing to take wounds for it, as we are for war.” John Andrew Holmes

Does good always triumph over evil?  Only because the winners get to tell the story.

Politicians promise “No draft.”  At the same time politicians speak of the value of “National Service” by our youth.  They say it can be an opportunity to serve the needs of the inner city, to improve the environment, and, oh yes, to serve your country in the military.  There are real needs in the inner city and for the environment.  So let’s put some significant money into those areas now. Strange, it’s not happening now. But we will get national service when the politicians think a draft is needed and socially aceptable (oh, I forgot, this is not a draft, it is “National Service.”)  But come another 9/11 (which our actions around the world are making increasingly likely), when all “true patriots” are clamoring for revenge, we will hear “National Service” for real. Make no mistake, it is a draft in sheep’s clothing, with useful options to shunt aside those who might otherwise object to military service. With universal service for both men and women, there will be plenty of wo/man power. But the true purpose is to fight a world war. Those who oppose it will be crucified.  I will oppose it with all my strength, knowing what it really is and how it came about. I hope others can hold to that same faith — it will not be easy.

Perhaps the worst thing to happen to Christianity was Constantine and his conversion to Christianity.  Perhaps the worst thing to happen to Socialism was Lenin and his Russian Revolution.  In each case, an ideal of peace and mutuality was usurped by a culture of force and authority.