In a message dated 08/12/2000 1:10:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< If you want to give up on the democratic ideal and tolerate
 resort to violence from either left or right, no matter how
 nobly motivated, be my guest.  The idea that everything is
 "rigged" by the Right is the cliche of the total dropout
 from the democratic process--which, may I remind you, can
 be painfully slow and demands the fullest participation by
 a citizenry.  If violence is the answer, JB, then the Right
 will win.  They got bigger and better guns.

 ==Ol' Dan
  >>

as I said, this isn't a new argument: to compare a little street ruckus with
the wholesale slaughter by the right-wing goons in charge of American foreign
policy in order that one may show how evenly balanced one is downright silly
and exposes those who make such comparisons as little more than political
ninnies.  for example, the vietnam war would probably still be going on if
tens of thousands of committed activists had not taken to the streets and
rioted.  that's what stopped the war -- it wasn't a lot of liberals
tut-tuting with their neighbors on the phone, it wasn't a phony appeal to
*painfully slow democracy*, and it wasn't the body bags.  but then, like now,
the liberals denounced the demonstrators with cliches such as*violent
extremists* and generally went on making a living and going to the movies.
well, old DP can stand atop his imaginary house of democracy -- anyone who
thinks we have anything like a democracy in this country is stumbling around
in a political blackout -- & piously scorn the actions of these heroic folks,
like his friend's bright son, while thousands of women and children are
condemned to brutal and premature deaths as a direct result of American
foreign policy, but in order to do so he has to ignore the ugly reality
around him.  in a sense he's doing what liberals have always done; leaving
the dangerous work of trying to rectify the wrongs to others willing to get
their heads busted, while pooh-poohing their tactics as offensive to their
bourgeois nostrils.

joe brennan