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When is it right to confront violence with violence?
When is it right to practice nonviolence? Responsibility is the answer.
The matter of this discourse: When is it appropriate to apply violence or nonviolence? Responsibility attuned to the "situation specific" answers this question.
In a real sense, the issue is not violence or nonviolence, although it is. Really, it is responsibleness. What is the responsible thing to do? Responsibility interfaces violence and nonviolence in the "situation specific."
Mahatma Gandhi, India's national leader, advocated and practiced nonviolence. Likewise, Martin Luther King, Jr, advocated and practiced nonviolence. I recall four days after Rosa Parks was arrested for violating Alabama's segregaton laws by refusing to give her bus seat to a white person, eighteen African American leaders organized the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to direct the Montgomery Bus Boycott At that meeting King was elected president and I, Uriah J. Fields, was elected secretary of the MIA.
During an Executive Board meeting of the MIA I asked King "What would you do if you saw someone about to kill your mother and you could shoot him first? King replied, "I cannot conceive of any situation where I would be violent." I strongly disagreed with King, and told him so. This was not my answer. I was a soldier during the Korean War. My Grandfather, born in slavery, demonstrated for me to see what it means to be responsible when violently attacked.
The Ku Klux Klan and some other racist groups practiced violence. History is replete with lynching and other violent acts they inflicted on African Americans after slavery. They are the opposite of Gandhi and King.
Responsibility interfaces violence and nonviolence. Violence on one side, killing and laming people without fear of consequences by violent perpetrators, must not be tolerated. To reiterate, responsibility interfaces violence and nonviolence. There is a time for violence to assault violence. There is a time for nonviolence to prevail. When appropriate responsibility accompanies violence and nonviolence. in the "situation specific."
Self-preservation and preservation of the lives of others remain "the first law of nature."
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Your article gives a lot of thought. I am in favor of nonviolence as well. But someone has to stop a driver driving through a crowd of nonviolent people as though he/she could take advantage of the weakness of unarmed people walking in the street.
Ron