What Revolutionaries, Counterrevolutionaries, And Defenders Of The Status Quo Forget: We Need Each Other

Two examples have led me to the conclusion expressed in the title of this blogpost. The first example is Marx's promotion of the Proletariat Dictatorship. Marx firmly believed that the proletariat had to be liberated from the bourgeoisie. To be liberated, the proletariat had to replace the bourgeoisie at both the workplace and government. And what would eventually follow, according to Marx, was a utopia.

The second example involve my experiences with Occupy Wall Street (OWS). I have fond memories of OWS and the Global Justice Working Group of which I was a part. I still miss meeting with those people. I had originally signed up with the Washington D.C. version, which initially had a different name, but found myself participating more with OWS in NYC. I remember the declaration that was written for the occupation of New York City (click here for a copy of that declaration). The declaration was almost flawless. All of the accusations made against the 1% made in that declaration have been proven to be true, and yet there was one flaw. The flaw was that with the charges we presented, we were asking the public to punish the 1%. Instead, we should have asked the 1% to join the rest of us in terms of sharing power and having to live under the same laws we live under--especially in terms of financial laws. In other words, we were asking for the 99% to replace the 1%.

Today's protests  also operate on that principle of replacing a threat or enemy. The tearing down of the statues, the calls by some to abolish the police, and CHOP (the Capital Hill project in Seattle) are all attempts at replacing parts of the status quo.

And though there is good reason to have certain statues be pulled down and significant police reforms to be made, the revolutionary call to replace parts of the status quo are the order of the day. And it is easy for members of the undecided public to feel threatened, or at least insecure by the call to replace. And if they feel insecure, imagine how defenders of the status quo and counterrevolutionaries feel. One feeling they have is that they feel left out of any future decision making process. And that could very well be true for the police when laws that attempt to reform how the police work are discussed and passed. For those municipalities who did little to nothing to let the police have a say in police reform, the replacement principle is being practiced.

In fact, if we remember the torch-lit protest that occurred in Charlottesville, Va., what was one of the chants uttered by the neo nazi, white supremacist groups? Wasn't it about claiming that they will not be replaced?

See, what we need today is a new kind of revolution. A revolution that is not based on exclusive claims for power, but inclusion. We need a revolution that is not looking to replace people, but is looking to create new structures so that people of different races, economic classes, and ideologies must work together to solve problems.

See, we don't need a proletariat to replace the bourgeoisie, we need the bourgeoisie and the proletariat to work together as equal partners so that they learn how to look out for, not just their own interests, but the interests of others.

See, we don't need for society to punish and give the 1% a time out from influencing government, we need the1% and the 99% to collaborate as equals so that the threats to justice and the environment cited in the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City can be thwarted.

See, we don't need idealists to restructure our police forces and leave all of the decisions in their hands. We need neighborhood representatives, government officials, and representatives of the police to work together to eliminate police abuse and racism in law enforcement.

We don't need rightly angered mobs to tear down monuments and statues at their discretion. We need a structure where city officials meet with representatives of all parts of the public to determine which monuments and statues must be torn down and what ones can remain. Who are we going to replace our nation's past heroes with?

And finally, we don't need a two-party system that gives the illusion that conservatives are battling liberals and vice-versa in an eternal king-of-the-hill  for control of the political system. We need conservatives, liberals, and leftists--we actually have no leftists in government--working together because they can admit that no one ideology has all of the answers to address our problems.

While it seems that all previous revolutions look to replace the privileged class with the marginalized class(es), we need revolutions that include, not exclude, both the privileged and the marginalized and redistribute the power so the privileged and the marginalized have equal power. Hopefully that means that they will work together to advance each other's interests.

We need to change our revolutions from being based on exclusion to being based on inclusion of both previously marginalized groups with oppressive groups. We need revolutions that replace practices without eliminating people. We need revolutions that are based on getting different groups to collaborate rather than to replace and discard.

Our survival as society and nation depends if we can conduct a new kind of revolution than what was practiced before.


 

Is Demouncing Revoution The Epitome Of Iconoclasm?

Neyeli Riano has recently written a post that aggressively attacks America's current protest movement (click here for introductory information on her and her list of articles written). Riano has taken an authoritarian approach by using quotes from Nicolás Gómez Dávila to bolster her case. She builds Dávila as a credible authority figure by describing him as a speaker and representative for the common man. Unfortunately, she assumes the absolute truth of each quote when she argues against today's revolution and iconoclasm.

What is iconoclasm? It is what we see in some of the protests when statues of past heroes are torn down. That is especially true when the statues being attacked are past American heroes who did not fight for the Confederacy such as Ulysses S. Grant and George Washington. Iconoclasm is the attack on 'settled beliefs and institutions' according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Of course that extends to the defacing or pulling down of statues of heroes. Of course Riano is complains about more than what happens to statues in her article on iconoclasm that was posted in the Imaginative Conservative blog (click here for the article). For she talks about the violence of the protests and the 'destruction replacing care,' in the protests' recent condemnation and reframing of our 'culture and history.'

In short she calls the current happenings a revolution of sorts. And with that label continues her quoting of Dávila and her selective application of those quotes. On revolutions, she quotes Dávila as saying the following:

Every revolution exacerbates the evils against which it breaks out.

The problem with that quote is that it is an overgeneralization that can be proved wrong with one simple counterexample. And while Riano applies that quote to what she sees is a current revolution, we should ask about the American Revolution if that statement is always true. Would those conservatives who agree with her attacks on the current protest movement then be consistent in condemning the American Revolution? If not, why not?

In fact, Riano's article starts with a quote from Dávila on revolutions:

Those who defend revolutions cite speeches; those who accuse them cite facts.

Now if we asked Riano to prove that claim by Dávila, how would she answer. Would she refuse to make a case in supporting the statement? Would she go through history and cite every statement made to defend or attack revolutions and show that Dávila's statement  is based on inductive study and observation? And again, how would she apply that statement to the American Revolution.

My favorite quote she drops from Dávila is:

A civilization’s memory resides in the continuity of its institutions. The revolution that interrupts a civilization’s memory, by destroying those institutions, does not relieve society of a bothersome weight that is paralyzing it, but merely forces it to start over.

In essence, Dávila is talking about the iconoclasm of the current "revolution." But we should note that iconoclasm shares a characteristic with history revisionism in that its value depends on the faults and problems that belong to the original. If a people's cherished institutions, beliefs, and heroes promoted significant injustice on others,  then why is iconoclasm portrayed as something that is destructive and bad? For example, was the dismantling of slavery and Jim Crow destructive? Didn't the actual overthrow of the Soviet Union give an opportunity to the Russian people to choose a better path? Suppose the Nazi's  quest for empire succeeded for hundreds of years, would a revolution be looked at as a bad thing?

At this point, some would complain about my comparing America with the old Soviet Union and the Nazis. But how do we think many minorities think about the comparison?

Then Riano goes on to attack another target: the government. For she says that both the tolerance to the current protests and the violence and government's quarantine approach to the pandemic shows a high disregard for regular working folks. Really? Using successful strategies to previous pandemics shows a disregard for working people? Has she paid attention to the effects of the Pandemic around the world and around our nation?

She then returns to iconoclasm and complains about the 'intellectual defense' of the violence in the protests. And yet, when she talks about past atrocities and violence, she says that such belongs to our history and tells us who we are while denouncing all violence that comes with the protests.

She then goes onto a couple of other subjects, but in the end she does this. She takes an authoritarian, traditionalist approach whose biggest complaint is that the wrong team is stealing the show. And she does so solely through a deductive approach taking care to mention what is happening in general without dealing with the specifics. And such is the way of the ideologue who deduces what life should be without having to deal with the facts on the ground as Ted Koppel so concisely expressed to Sean Hannity on Hannity's tv show.







References

1. https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2020/06/secular-iconoclasm-peasant-indignation-nayeli-riano.html
2. https://theimaginativeconservative.org/author/nayeli-riano

We Currently Have No Chance At Solving Our Problems

If the Russian Revolution tells us anything, it tells us that to get real change, we must do more than just change the places of the first and last place teams, we must change the game. When the Russian Revolution succeeded in overthrowing the Tsars in the February, 1917 Revolution and then in overthrowing the provisional government in October of the same year, tyrannical rule was kept only it was practice by a new group.
 
Thus, both revolutions failed. Why? It was because the revolutionaries sought their own power. The provisional government replaced the Tsars in the February Revoution. And though they didn't rule with the iron hand, they didn't share power.

More often than not, when revolutionaries seek to replace the current leaders by force, they are not seeking to change the game by which government operates, they only seek to take the place of those who were ruling and they are willing to use the same methods and force to maintain their power as it took to put them in power. Thus, the game never changed except for the identity of the first and last place teams did.

While talking with one high school student at church, I recommended that he watch the PBS special on the Freedom Riders (click here). Like those participating in the Russian Revolution, the Freedom Riders sought to change the great injustices they saw. But they did things differently than Russians did. The Freedom Riders abstained from violence; they abstained from both external and internal violence. And the Freedom Riders enjoyed more and longer lasting success than those participating in the Russian Revolution.

This should teach us something. Those who use physical or verbal violence to get their way are not seeking to change things for our benefit, they are only seeking power. And that is why we have no real chance to change things today. That is because  over 98% of what we see in the public square is a continual sparring between representatives of different ideological and political groups. We are seeing a continual sparring between  groups that are seeking their own interests.

So we have a choice. We can either join in or we can follow the examples those who who nonviolently participated in the Civil Rights Movement. To follow the former group is to guarantee the status quo only with new faces. To follow the latter group gives us our only chance to change from our current journey to self-destruction.



 

Reflections On The Good And Bad Of NYC's May Day, 2015

I love May Day. On that day, I get to congregate with fellow Leftists. And this particular May Day would be special for two reasons: 1) I was eligible for a half-price bus ticket to NYC because of my age and; 2) I didn't know what to expect after the Baltimore riots. See, the May Day celebration in NYC has always addressed unjust law enforcement. 

Having gone down early so I could browse a couple of book stores,  I waited for the festivities to start. There were the usual speeches about workers' rights and how American Imperialism ties in with immigration problems. The speeches contained some good content as well as a justified anger at the current conditions and events.

While down there, I talked to a few police officers as well as some fellow leftists. What I wanted to know from the officers was how they felt about the celebration/protest. I know they could not give a personal opinion but I asked anyway. For a couple, they only cared about the protest being peaceful. Another officer stated that he would be glad to tell me what he thought if he was off duty.

I talked to a fellow leftist who was wearing the emblem from the flag of the Soviet Union on his shirt. This emblem has always bothered me and I count it as the leftist equivalent to the 'stars and bars' of the Confederate States of America flag. He made it clear that he didn't want a return of the old Soviet Union under Stalin. Instead, he wanted a new Soviet Union based on democracy. However, when I asked him about Lenin, he demonstrated the key weakness shared by many of the young protesters who participated: a lack of education. 

My leftist friend seemed quite unaware of the criticisms of Lenin made by some of his contemporaries from within the ranks. These criticisms came from people such as Rosa Luxemburg, Anton Pannekoek, and Karl Kautsky. Noam Chomsky (click here), not a contemporary of Lenin,  echos many of these criticisms when he states that when Lenin took control, his elite-centered takeover of the Revolution and his rule over Russia was, politically speaking, a turn to the Right. My leftist friend also did not know about the purges practiced by Lenin.

His lack of knowledge of Socialism seemed to typify the same in many of the young protesters. Many of these protesters were chanting 'shut the system down' and 'f___ the police.' They would also occasionally yell at bystanders who seemed to be well off. Such expresses the sentiments of Russia's Bolsheviks who wanted revolution to be followed by a centralized government under their control. These Bolsheviks would eventually go after anyone not belonging to their own group.

In contrast to the Bolsheviks were the Mensheviks. They were different from the Bolsheviks in at least 2 ways. First, The Mensheviks believed in the soviets. A soviet was nothing more than a workers' council where decisions were made. The Mensheviks wanted Russia to be ruled by the soviets. The Bolsheviks opposed that because decisions made by the soviets could be made independently. Second, the Mensheviks perceived that Socialism needed to take place in stages and develop over time for it to succeed.¹ The Bolsheviks spoke revolution now because of a lack of patience. The result of how Lenin and the Bolsheviks pursued revolution was that they became another version of the Tsar's regime. Here we should ask if the slogans chanted by my young fellow Leftists indicate that they would follow the Bolsheviks' example if they had the opportunity to get power.

But if that is not enough, what the chants listed above showed was an ignorance what Martin Luther King Jr taught. King not only opposed external violence, he was against internal violence as well. Internal violence was the violence that comes from hating or being bitter. One way such violence is expressed is through words. Rather than fighting people, King sought to win his opponents over. And when that would not work and his opponents were oppressive, he sought to use the law to restrain their abusive behaviors. Here, we should note when one's goal is in winning people over, one is not seeking to conquer. 

Now, especially toward the end of his life, King was a fan of neither the Communism of the Soviet Union nor Western Capitalism. But he was a Socialist of sorts. He accomplished much in his life and he did that by trying to persuade rather than trying to intimidate or force people to join. So we should ask how the chants described above could possibly win over opponents. Rather, such chants were challenges supporting the survival of the fittest. Again, that was the kind of Socialism practiced by the Bolsheviks as they sought to dominate not just the counter-revolutionaries, but dissenting fellow Socialists as well.

In addition, regarding the chant aimed at the police, we have to consider the job of the police officer. There are at least several parts of a police officer's job that I could never do. Yes, the anger at those police officers who practice abuse and racism is justified. But the chant used against all police officers was not. And judging a whole group by the actions of some is nothing more than bigotry. We should also note that in nonviolent revolutions, which is the only kind where the revolutionaries do not seek to subjugate all, cooperation of those who enforce the law is required for success. This was shown in the removal of Milosevic from power in Serbia as well as in the Arab Spring.  And it was also shown when Chavez was briefly overthrown in Venezuela in the early 2000s, but he regained power when a massive number of peasants came into the city causing those who initially supported the coup to give up. If we are really concerned about conducting successful nonviolent revolutions, how is it that we can win over the police when we verbally attack them?

If the Left  is going to have a chance at changing this country, we must learn the history that tells us what has succeeded and what has failed. And we have to decide is whether we prefer to conquer others or persuade our opponents to join us. If the young protesters at NYC's May Day celebration are a reflection of where the Left is, then those who afraid of its politics can rest easy not just for tonight, but for many nights to come.

References

1. A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924, by Orlando Figes, pg 190, 211

Herding The Sheep

In the year 2000, it was John McCain, a Republican who played this role. He was the self-described "maverick" of the Republican. The Democratic Party counterpart to McCain was played by Howard Dean in 2004. Two Democrats played this role 2008. These candidates were Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel. And in 2012, Republicans had a few candidates playing this role. These candidates included Herman Cain, Michelle Bachman, and Ron Paul. In the 2016 election, it is possible that Bernie Sanders could be the Democratic representative to play this special role and who knows what Republican(s) will do the same? What role are we talking about here? The role is that of representing the outliers of a major political party during the primaries with the purpose of preventing their followers from leaving their respective parties.

Sometimes these outlier candidates become mainstays of their respective parties. Both John McCain and Howard Dean did just that by becoming the Presidential nominee in McCain's case and party chairman in Dean's case. But the purpose of these outlier candidates is to prevent the outlier voters from leaving their respective parties. What tells us this? A simple comparison between the candidates' primary speeches and their actions after the nominees has been chosen. 

In the end, what the two major parties' outlier candidates do is to preserve the Two-Party system by reducing the number of voters who end up voting for third party candidates. My guess is that most followers of these outlier candidates end up voting for the party's nominee of the outlier candidate they supported while the rest will either vote for third party candidates or end up not voting. In this way, the Two-Party system is saved.

The result of preserving the Two-Party system is that those who control the two major parties, which are those who contribute the most money to the parties and the campaigns,  rule over our political and economic systems. In other words, while the Two-Party system rules the status quo remains the same and nothing changes, including the current direction of our country.

However, controlling the vote is not the only way to direct the sheep. Co-opting groups is another way. Co-opting a group is where protesters are being used rather than heard. They become used in that they begin to accomplish someone else's purpose than their own. Groups are vulnerable to being co-opted when friends and allies are not fully vetted. It isn't that one must be a purist while protesting; it is ok and can even be beneficial to demonstrate in heterogeneous groups. My first protests, both of which saw hundreds of thousands of participants, included all sorts of non-conservatives, namely Democrats, who quickly quit protesting after they gained control of the House. 

But as with revolutions, such as the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and Egypt's revolution, groups and movements can be hijacked and used to fulfill the goals of others including maintaining the status quo. This is the fear of writers like Arun Gupta (click here) and Cory Morningstar (click here) as they looked at the sponsors of the then upcoming climate change protest. We know that seriously addressing climate change will require major structural changes in society. So, they ask, how can a protest that is sponsored by those interested in maintaining the status quo initiate the necessary changes to reverse the damage our way of life is forcing on our world? The worst case scenario for this last protest is that people went out thinking they initiated a change when, in reality, they reinforced the structures whose way of business attacks our environment. 

We need to achieve a balance here. We need to protest in heterogeneous groups because being purists limits our numbers to insignificant levels. At the same time, we want to succeed at accomplishing our goals, not someone else's. And this is the dilemma groups have. On the one hand, the purist's tent is too small. On the other hand, you don't want to end up in another tent.

Of course, there is a third way to herd the sheep. That way is to steer sheep away from a particular direction. This occurred during the Occupy encampments when at least saboteur disrupted a protest. I remember being in one of the Occupy encampments during a particular protest where a saboteur deliberately provoked a security guard into action and one of our protesters paid for that by being sprayed at point blank range with pepper spray. That protester could not open his eyes for around 20 minutes after being sprayed. As for the protest, it was terminated at that point by security. And it is possible that some were discouraged from joining us because of the incident. I witnessed other incidents of interference as well.

We should note the strong efforts of some to control many and to stifle a fuller democracy. And so far, their efforts are paying off because our way of life primarily consists of the accumulation of things and profits. Martin Luther King Jr. described our society as 'thing-oriented' society in his speech against the Vietnam War (click here):

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

Even if they had the ability to deliver, neither major political party has the will to implement the kind of revolution which King foresaw as being necessary.  And so we are herded, like animals into chutes, by voting for candidates of the two major parties and thus maintaining the 'thing-oriented' society which King opposed. Those who venture off to work for a 'person-oriented' society are sometimes wooed by candidates from the major political parties while at other times are marginalized. Those who think differently are sought and courted by outlier candidates. They are first seduced into following the candidate and then consoled into biting the bullet by voting for their candidate's political party even if they have to hold their nose to do so.

In the meantime, we will be encouraged to congratulate ourselves for small victories while the basic structure of our thing-oriented society remain in tact.

So is Bernie Sanders the newest outlier candidate? Only time will tell. The same goes for events like the latest climate march that just occurred in New York City. Did the protest call for a necessary change from being a thing oriented to being a person-oriented society so that we can reduce our ecological footprint while ensuring a reasonable chance for more to have a sufficient lifestyle? Again, only time will tell. But if we see time telling us what we don't want, then we need to abandon those candidates and groups designed to prevent change.

Refining Revolution

Everybody knows that there is something seriously wrong with our country and that we need to change things. Even liberals recognize this. Conservatives think that what is wrong is the choice of personnel in our nation's capital and that what is needed is conservative control of the government. For if conservatives controlled the government, then government would either stop corrupting business by giving it an avenue to power or would quit hindering business from reaching its divine and market-dictated destinies.

Meanwhile, Liberals believe that our problems could be solved if Conservatives would just get out of the way of the President and his agenda. Unfortunately, the President's agenda includes more executive power (see the NDAA of 2012), the prosecution of whistleblowers, more for corporations (see the bailouts, corporate welfare, and lack of criminal prosecution of our Financial Services sector), bloated military budgets, and trade agreements, like the TPP, that increase corporate power, all of which has bipartisan support from both major political parties. 

So both Conservatives and Liberals recognize the need for change but the change desired revolves around personnel choices. Conservatives think that we need Conservatives to be in control while Liberals that there are too many Conservatives are there already. 

What remains unsaid is what the Left wants. And certainly the Left wants a change in personnel. But more than that, the Left wants a new system. The Left wants a more participatory system both in terms of economics as well as politics. This is what makes the Left revolutionary. The Left just doesn't want an overthrow of those running the current system, it wants a new system too. 

Before considering how to conduct this revolution, the Left needs to look in on past revolutions to see what it could learn. The first place from the past we should visit is the French Revolution. This revolution ended badly for all concerned. Why? It ended after much violence and with a similar end as beginning. It ended with an elite-centered government that waged war and brought destruction. And when one looks at the means of the revolution, one shouldn't be surprised at the results. Vengeance, not just change, was a major theme and thus violence was the immoral means relied on.

Compare the means and ends of the French Revolution with that of  Civil Rights activists in this country during the middle of the century. For many Civil Rights Activists, nonviolence was the means and the ends was a partial awakening of the country that won over both the apathetic and some opponents.

The nonviolent means used by many Civil Rights activists from the past outshines the nonviolent approach taken by my fellow Occupy activists. For though, generally speaking, we did not resort to physical violence even when bullied by some of the police, too many of us responded to police tactics with what Martin Luther King Jr. called "internal violence." Here, King was referring to the one's spirit and attitude and how it was expressed with words. Verbally attacking the police was not only wrong, it didn't consider the audience. Outside of watching us, despite the abuses of power, the police have a job many of us could not handle. They have to make quick decisions in what was sometimes life threatening situations. They have to deal with some of the worse in society on a regular basis and we failed to recognize the difficulty of their job. And that context amplifies the internal violence we sometimes exercised on the police. 

For a different approach, we should study how Civil Rights activists from the past caused the public to contrast their dignified response, as exercised by their abstaining from both external and internal violence, with the brute force of their opponents. The difference in behaviors between these activists and their oppressors won over much of the country. In contrast to these activists, whatever dignity our physically nonviolent approach merited was obscured by how we answered the police with our screaming accusations.

Another fault of the French Revolution was that it scapegoated the nobility and clergy. Certainly both were at fault and either oppressed or were complicit in persecuting the rest of the population. But unlike what would occur later in South Africa, there was only the desire to get revenge as opposed to seeking reconciliation and winning over their opponents. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) had two objectives. First, the crimes that occurred under apartheid had to be made public. Second, reconciliation was sought including the payment of reparations. And though there were problems with how processes were carried out, the existence of the commission itself stands as a model to be imitated and improved on. For rather than removing those who carried out and benefitted from apartheid from society with punitive actions, it sought to include them in a new South Africa.

The inclusion of the 1%, and here we will use the value 1 symbolically, is what the Occupy Movement did not seek to do when it declared its message through words and actions. In other words, any positive change that the Occupy Movement would achieve would not include the 1%. Such made the 1% harder to win over since they were made to be defensive about their control over the status quo. And it isn't that the Occupy Movement was wrong in specifying what the 1% was doing; rather, it was wrong in ostracizing the 1% rather than trying to win them over. What the 1% has created in our country and around the globe are two economic worlds: a world crafted for the benefit of the 1% and a world for the rest of us who, in most cases, must serve the whims of the 1% to survive. The separation between the 1% and the rest as seen in these two distinct worlds can be called an economic apartheid.

We had, and still have, a choice in describing the remedy for this economic apartheid. We could envision a new world where the 1% get what's coming to them or we could see a new world where the 1% would be included in a single economic world designed to benefit all.

However, implementation of the latter world fell short in South Africa. That is because while the political system was changed, the economic system was not. It still remained a world of investor domination over the economy. And because of that, the political freedom experienced by Blacks in South Africa has not been translated in economic uplift for the vast majority of South Africa's Blacks. We should note that any successful revolution cannot tolerate an elite-centered economy any more than it can tolerate an elite-centered political system. Thus, the problem for South Africa is that it may not be able to maintain its new political and social freedoms if they do not translate into economic betterment. Here, political and social freedoms might, in the future, be judged guilty by association with the maintenance of the old economic system. 

A similar problem to South Africa's political freedom not being followed by a new economic system occurred here. Martin Luther King saw this problem coming when he noticed how spending for the Vietnam War was taking away what was necessary to spend on people to change their economic plight. We should note that wealth disparity between the races in America has not grown smaller.

Finally, the greatest threat to any revolution is that of it being hijacked. This is especially true when the goal of a revolution is to establish and maintain a more participatory system. Somehow, parasitic authoritarians latch on pretending to be believers only to eventually seize control of the revolution so that there is only a change in players, not in the game being played. Thus, revolutions to overthrow tyrants have often produced more tyrants. The Russian and Iranian Revolutions provide examples of hijacked insurgencies. So has the recent Egyptian Revolution though that revolution continues.

One reason why people's revolutions are often taken over by opportunists is that the enthusiasm for displacing the current system is often much greater than the energy it takes to establish a participatory system. Participatory systems ask people to sacrifice some of their own pursuits to establish self-rule. These people are use to laissez-faire relationships with their government so that the only interaction they have with their government comes election time, that is if they have meaningful elections in the first place. Outside of that, they wanted a government that fulfilled their wishes and is non to low maintenance. Participatory political systems require that people invest their time, energy, and emotion into deciding how they will live as a group. The Occupy Movement gave a good, though not perfect, illustration of a participatory system. Certainly, the model of self-rule used by the Occupy Movement would not work with larger and more heterogeneous groups. But the idea that groups could practice self-rule was shown.

Of course, to enable people to be involved in a more participatory political system, our current economic system has to change. People cannot both work in today's full-time jobs and be more involved in local and national politics. It's impossible. 

And so we end up with needing to lead a moral revolution where people become more interested in self-rule than excessive prosperity so that they are willing to spend less time pursuing riches. This is the tradeoff people must accept to enjoy self-rule. It isn't that people must give up prosperity altogether. Rather, people must seek less personal prosperity in order to have enough time to exercise self-rule in a participatory system. Yes, that means that the rich will not be as rich, but it can also mean that the poor will not be as poor.

What we have learned about people's revolutions thus far is that they must be nonviolent and inclusive as well as introduce and get enough support for more participatory economic and political systems. Are there other suggestions to be made to make real people's revolutions more probable? Certainly, but based on what we have seen in history, this is what this blog can come up with.

Should Christians Rebel Against Sin?

Christians around the world are in a dilemma. On the one hand, we have grown up with passages like Romans 13 and I Samuel 15:23 that condemn rebellion and command submission to those in authority. For the American Conservative Christian, these ideas have been driven deep into our psyches and souls and thus to hear the other half of our dilemma sometimes causes us to seek an escape. But if we don't make authoritarian leaders like Endrogen, Morsi, Putin, Netanyahu, America's Democratic and Republican parties, and others relics of the past, we will condemn ourselves and all around us to totalitarian rule. And during that totalitarian rule, if not already occurring, we will be forced to both financially and politically support all sorts of evil atrocities.

So if we care that we would be contributing to the abuse of others, the question becomes: Are there ways that us Christians can resist and oppose those in authority and still remain faithful to God and obedient to His Word?

For some, the answer is a slam dunk. "Of course not!" So rather than learning how to resist, some say that we need to focus on how to stay faithful during the coming trials. But such is a self-centered approach and is not always the way that our spiritual forefathers handled those in authority. The Old Testament prophets often challenged the kings over social justice issues in behalf of those who were made to suffer. They did so for the sake of the oppressed. So our choice in today's world where those in power only serve those with wealth is to either try to keep our own noses clean or rebel.

Now if we choose the latter option, we should assume that, at least in some ways, Christians would rebel differently from nonChristians. That rather than seeking to rebel because we are  self-asorbed, we want to flee from accountability,  and we with to be numb to the pain we inflict on others, especially our enemies, we need to discover different methods in how we resist and goals for why we rise up against those who rule over us.

Therefore, I would like to propose two, what I believe to be biblical, guidelines for how Christians are to rebel if they must, against those with authority.  The first guideline comes from Chris Hedges. In his book, The World As It Is, Chris distinguishes rebellion from revolution (see here for quote). While revolution is simply replacing who is in power with those whom you prefer, rebellion is a constant state of opposition we take to whomever is in power for the sake of the vulnerable. Here Chris is addressing why rebellion is preferable to revolution. And what Chris is saying here is that we should be loyal to the principle of defending and caring for the weak rather than continue the same old tribalism that usually revolves around a person.  We could add that depending on revolution and the tribalism involved all to often results in changing the players but not the game. And because we would have sacrificed to install the new leaders should our revolution be successful, we would be least inclined to oppose their abuses. We should also note that we should stand up for our own rights if persecuting us will lead to attacking others who are more vulnerable.

What we should note about the Hedges's  cause for rebellion is that it is at least partially for the sake of those who cannot repay or compensate us. It is for those who have been forsaken and left for dead by the status quo. Rebellion here isn't about fighting or exploiting others in order to increase the chances that I will fame and foture; rather, it is about anonymously standing up for the defenseless. Rebellion here plays no favorites in order to serve the untouchables of our society.

Being the moralist that he is, Hedges wants us to rebel for morality's sake, not because of some perceived financial or power opportunism. And since Hedges is liberal theologian, Conservative Christians like myself ask how can this perspective be unbiblical rather than, in this case wrongfully, assume it is?

However, if we are going to remain faithful to our Christian calling, we can't given into self-righteousness and give ourselves permission to lash out simply because we are defending the poor and oppressed, we have limits what we can do and say. These limits are set by Nicholas Wolterstorff's biblical reminder  (I Peter 2) that we are to honor everyone. Such a command does not limit the level of the opposition we exercise against those in power who oppress the innocent; but it requires that we don't get so carried away with ourselves and our cause that we would fail to give the respect due to those in authority simply because of their position. It basically means that we should not practice what Martin Luther King called "internal violence" or have feelings of hate or showing disrespect for those we want to hold accountable. Since the ends cannot extend past the means, we should note that the more we give into the dark side when opposing oppressors, the more likely it is that we will join them even if we should we win.

There is something horribly wrong when nonChristians are willing to sacrifice so much for justice while Christians prefer to play it safe by staying on the sidelines, focussing on being good, and never being an absentee citizen. Christians should be in the forefront in the protests in Turkey, Brazil, Bulgaria, and the coming protests in Egypt. These protests, for the most part, are about justice. At the same time, Christians participants will have to depart from their fellow activists when it comes to attacking our opponents.  If we are to rebel, it can only be for the sake of the marginalized and morality. In addition we must control how we express that rebellion. 

Revolution Today Or Death Tomorrow

Calling all Mathematicians! The following problem is the most important Math problem to solve today. The train of the lessons learned from history is leaving from the East traveling West at so many miles per hour. On the same track, the train of an ever advancing and adulterous technology is leaving from the West traveling East at so many miles per hour. When will these two trains meet? The answer to this question tells us how long we have left on this earth.

From the East starts the train of the lessons learned from History. What are those lessons? Actually, there is only one lesson and that is, as others have said, we have not learned from history. What haven't we learned? Despite the horrors of war, we have not learned how to live without it.

From the West starts the train of technology. This train contains the know-how to make every tool that betters our lives. But this train also carries the WMDs that threaten our existence. It is obvious that technology is advancing because our toys, both tools and weapons, are more powerful. And though we often find comfort in our technological edge over our adversaries, we shouldn't. Why? We should be uncomfortable because our technology today can be someone else's technology tomorrow. That is the adulterous nature of technology.

The only chance we have of avoiding this cataclysmic train collision is to derail one of these trains. Which train should we derail? It cannot be the train of technology. The train of technology is transporting necessary cargo for our survival as well as destructive cargo. Also, past attempts to derail the WMD part of this train have proven to be counterproductive. For example, according to Richard Wilson, a former Chair of the Department of Physics at Harvard, Israel's 1981 bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor in Osirak seemed to start Saddam's nuclear weapons program rather than halt it (http://www.physics.harvard.edu/~wilson/publications/OSIRAK(2)). Our invasion of Iraq is another example where an attempt to selectively derail the train of technology, it was claimed that Iraq was developing WDMs, was counterproductive because terrorism increased afterwards (http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2007/03/iraq_effect_1.html).

So our only hope for survival is to derail the train carrying the lessons learned from history. To do this, we will have to learn History's most important lesson that war does not work. We will have to do so quickly because these two trains could collide at any moment. So, what we really need is a revolution if we are to survive.

What must we change? We must eliminate those factors that start conflicts. The first thing we need to change is our addiction to groupism. Groupism is where we are more loyal to a group than to moral values. We can tell that our country is controlled by groupism when our government supports the same aggressive actions performed by our allies that it condemns when done by our adversaries. A variation of this form of groupism can be seen when Israelis are apathetic to the plight of the Palestinians and yet call for the death of Arabs after innocent Israelis are murdered. Palestinians return the favor when they vow vengeance after their own are killed while they rejoice when Israelis are killed.

Another sign that we are carrying out groupism is when our loyalty to a group limits our choices. Examples of this expression of groupism could be constantly seen in the Cold War when our nation would back all sorts of repressive regimes that were not communistic rather than find an alternative approach. Now groupism also applies to individuals. In 2004, I encountered numerous Kerry voters who agreed more with Nader than Kerry. So why didn't they vote for Nader? It was because they were Democrats. Sure they said that Nader didn't have a chance to win but Nader didn't have a chance to win because too few Democrats were going to break ranks to vote for someone else. This type of groupism shows a preference for power and control over values.

Defeating groupism will be difficult. Groups give us a sense security and significance. Not only that, many of us were raised on groupism. Groupism started for us with rooting for hometown and school sports teams and then it affects how we register to vote. A possible result of this is that we expect our government to rely on groupism too. But unless we are willing to limit our affection and allegiance to any group, our groupism will distract us from promoting equality and will push us into presuming we are superior. If we think we are superior, we will feel entitled and will try to dominate. The result of groupism is that its victims resist control and feel enraged when favoritism trumps fairness and justice.

We must also undo our addiction to materialism. At the worst, our materialism habit causes us to hoard resources and wealth. The more we accumulate for ourselves, the less there is for others. The less there is for others, the more we, or our mercenaries, must dominate so we can keep what we have because the result of our hoarding oppresses the have-nots.

At the least, our materialism becomes an escape from a disturbing world. That is our possessions provide a comfortable cocoon in which to live. When we live in that cocoon, we are shielded from the suffering of have-nots. At this point, a law of physics takes over. That law states that an object that lives in comfort, stays in comfort. People who do not live in comfort, however, are not bound by that law.

If we are to overcome this materialism, then we must prefer to accumulate connections with others to amassing riches. And the most meaningful connections we can accumulate are those that include people in need. In other words, we, as individuals and as a nation, need to put a higher priority on sharing than getting or controlling. If we do more than superficially share, we just might be pleasantly surprised by the results.

Finally, we must forsake the all or nothing thinking that says that one is either for us or against us. Though Bush made this approach popular, the origin of this all or nothing thinking goes back to the start of the Cold War. This all or nothing thinking trapped us into deciding to attack leftist regimes rather than work with them. Overthrowing Iran's Parliamentary government in 1953 because it was seen as moving towards Communism when it planned to nationalize oil resources caused a tragic chain reaction of events and failed decisions that we still are suffering through today. Instead of seeing nations or people as being polar opposites, we need to see that all of us are on different locations on the same continuum. The implication here is that we can better avoid or resolve conflicts when we recognize common concerns and values we have with adversaries.

Though we need a revolution today to prevent the two trains from colliding, we do not need a violent revolution that overthrows the government; violence is what we want to eliminate because it will be self-destructive. Rather, we need a revolution that calls on us to change as much as it demands that our government change. And though people will call this kind of revolution naive; if this revolution fails and the two trains meet, then life on earth as we know it will be called utopian.