Disturbing the peace

Stuff like this makes me, a normally proud and outspoken progressive, very embarassed. It doesn't do my cause any help to act like ignorant arrogant yehus! Both right and left have their radicals. No group is immune.

Why hasn't she been detained and questioned by the FBI and/or Secret Service? After all, it's against the law the threaten the president, and I don't think they make allowances for jokes and/or hyperbole, any more than the airline security people would if someone where to make a joke about a bomb while waiting in line.

I don't like President Bush, but somehow I think that if I stood up in public and said, "I want to kill George Bush," I would probably get a knock on my door pretty soon afterwards. And understandably so: all such threats, however ironically intended, have to be taken seriously.

I guarantee you that any goodwill by word and example these peaceniks hoped to inspire in the community here is now gone.

What goodwill would your community have to offer a bunch of leftist women anyway? I can assure you that *their* audience understands the sentiment just fine. I can also assure you that whatever goodwill was lost from a community that would take one statement and use it as impetus to disregard every word and work produced by this conference isn't going to be missed by these women *or* their audience.

"I do think, though, that Rod's response partially answers his questions about why there's not a real peace movement: Mainstream Americans, especially on the right, seem to find protest marches, and (usually hyperbolic) protest-style speech, ridiculous."

I think there is some truth in this statement. As a Quaker, many members of my Meeting (church) are active in peace issues, and all of us highly value peacemaking and living a life that is peace-promoting. However, there are a number of us -- including myself -- who have not been very active in the current anti-war protest movement. The rhetoric of many of the protesters does not seem very peaceful, and the whole "anti-ness" of it seems limiting and narrow. I've let my congresspeople know my views and stuck a peace sign in my yard, but that's about as far as I've felt called to go. The statement by the speaker at the conference is exactly the kind of thing that makes me uncomfortable associating myself with the movement.

I'm not alone. One elder Friend in particular comes to mind. He has been very active in positive peace building for a long time, but he's stayed on the margins of the anti-war protests because he feels they are not promoting lasting peace rooted in the values of human dignity. I believe he would forcefully (and perhaps persuasively) argue that a "peace movement" and an "anti-war movement" are two very different things.

Just to be fair, I should add that there are, of course, many Quakers who are heavily involved in the current anti-war movement, in spite of their awareness that some of their fellow protesters may not share their values regarding loving their enemies. They view the cause as critical enough to be engaged while trying to influence the values of the movement from the inside. It's a choice I can respect, but have not felt called to make myself.

P.S. in response to Naturalmom's comments---though I am not a pacifist (in the literal sense of believing violence is never justified), I do have respect for those, like Quakers, who truly do believe war or fighting is never justified. But the fact is, most of the people attending this conference are probably not of this kind. Betty Williams seems to basically be saying: "I want to have the title of 'peace activist,' but you know, if Bush were to be murdered I wouldn't mind it that much."

A basic tenet of pacifism is love for all people. Somehow, I don't think a lot of people in the "peace movement" are aware of this.

God bless.

What can anyone add here that Orwell didn't say better a long time ago?

"There is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real those unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of the western countries."

"I just wish some of these Bush-hating liberals would go to China or Iran or Indonesia and publically protest the oppression and suppression and torture and killing of religious minorities or free-speech activists there."

Don't leave home without it!

Did the speaker not come from Ireland? She was traveling abroad for her activism, no? Maybe this was just her first stop on the way of many?

Is Betty Williams Catholic? Is so maybe she should have read Matthew 5:21-22,

"...Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment."

"But I say unto you that, That is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: that whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool shall be in danger of hell fire..."

"...just blocks away from where JFK was murdered, really takes the cake."

And just a few more blocks from Dealy Plaza is Belo Central, where Rod Dreher and assorted other war-mongering 'journalists' howled for war and the deaths and 10s of thousands of Iraqis.

Which is worse? An Irishwomen making a rhetorical gaffe, or professional journalists using their paper to plead incessantly for war on behalf of a lying, incompetent administration?

Which is worse? An Irishwomen making a rhetorical gaffe, or professional journalists using their paper to plead incessantly for war on behalf of a lying, incompetent administration?

Rod has publicly admitted he was wrong, so it's unfair to include him in this number. Your larger point, however, is well made. When it's possibly hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims on the rhetorical chopping block, that's okay. One rich white man, though, that's unconscionable.

Yay America!!

"But to be fair, Rod and others were not calling for the deaths of "hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims;" they were calling for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein."

Anyone who calls for the overthrow of a soveriegn nation must surely know that innocent lives will be lost.