Quote:
Originally Posted by key
The most powerful image of this whole health care debate (or screaming match if you will) is the man with Parkinson's disease who simply sat in front of the people who were wanting to deny him health care (to be his personal death panel).
His name is Robert Letcher, he has a PhD and was a nuclear engineer before being diagnosed with Parkinson's 15 years ago.
He is also a Martial Artist and he said he used his breathing exercises while he sat there and absorbed the hatred and condescension that was being violently hurled at him.
Personally I consider him an American Hero because of that moment.
Like Martin Luther King Jr, like Gandhi, like others have shown us throughout civil rights struggles in the past
pure and centered, righteous peace in the face of injustice really can change people's hearts. And when you have changed their hearts, they will change their minds
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It was also VERY telling about just how 'compassionate' these conservatives are.
As an aside, while I admire both Gandhi and King I think, sometimes, we idealize these men without taking their actions in context. Gandhi and King were able to use non-violent protests because the people who were the oppressors were, for the most part, civilized people. By that I mean that, for instance, both British and American culture had (maybe still have) at their cultural cores the idea that it is just *wrong* for a stronger (read armed) person to beat up a weaker (read unarmed/unresisting) person. So both men and their followers were facing people who *could* be reached, eventually after enough bodies were broken.
Had Gandhi or King had to face down the Nazis then I think history would have turned out *very* differently. Post-Weimar Germany had, at its core, an ethic that the strong had every right and, what's more, every *reason* to beat up the weak. Non-violent resistance would have just *encouraged* the Nazis because it would have shown them that blacks or Hindus just weren't willing to fight back.
One of the things that makes me so concerned about what I'm seeing and the actions of the national GOP leadership (who are standing in a puddle of gasoline and playing with a lighter) is that I can't yet tell if we are dealing with the British circa 1940, the Americans circa 1960 or the Germans circa 1936. What I saw the other day, in the pictures of those Tea Party protesters throwing money at this man with Parkinson's was closer to the latter than the former two. What I saw were the healthy and strong chomping at the bit to do something to the weak and sick.
Cheers
Aj