Will you condone murder?

"It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
Albert Einstein

Who do you support?

Just to keep old Albert's ideas accurate.....

"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, science for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despiceable an ignoreable war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." -- Albert Einstein

I'm the kind of person who scoops up spiders and puts them outside when they invade my living spaces. I even do that with desert roaches when I find them trapped in my bathtub. Yes, even cockroaches deserve to live.

In fact, the only spider I will squash is the black widow and I've only squashed one of them.

I didn't want a man who murdered a family member to get the death penalty. I am grateful that he didn't, that he died in jail unable to hurt anyone else.

Now whose side do you think I'm on with Einstein's statement?

my objection is not that they exist, but that they exist in my living quarters :D

Murder is murder, no matter how you try to rationalize it.

and our war of independence against England, the Dutch rebellion against Spain and the war against the nazis (world war II) were all acts of unjustified murder using your logic. I think not. There are things worth fighting for. Please feel free to submit when so ordered.

:shrug:

ditto Great Britain

I am willing to fight for my rights. In my home town of Grant Town, West Virgina Consolidated Coal Company would bring in in armed goon squads to break the coal miners strikes. Well it was West Virginia and the miners had guns too. They fought for their rights and many of them died fighting. But they won the right to organize, they won the right to not have to buy everything at the company store they won the right to a living wage and pension plan and health benefits. The company did not yield these things without a fight, and they were willing to kill the workers to keep them in line. In my county the company was the law in those days.

Are you willing to submit to tyranny and oppression like a little lamb. There are times when violence does solve problems. I am willing to defend myself and my home and my family and not be a helpless victim.

I both know and understand the history of which you speak.

Nonetheless, it bears remembering that all the guns didn't do a blessed thing. Not in northern WV, nor in southern. Miners stayed under the Bosses' bootheels until FDR came into office and union recognition was legislated without a shot being fired.

As someone who is actively engaged in the day-to-day fight against Mountain Range Removal, I can tell you that violence solves nothing. We're already called "Eco-terrorists," and violence would only give the Coal Thugs a reason to kill us. That's not "winning" by any measure.

"I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime."

and did not go to some more idyllic fantasy land. And he was certainly smart enough to get the hell out of Germany before he was sent to the gas chamber, unlike so many of his co-religionists and other unfortunates.

:shrug:

Gandhi.

and I am willing to kill to defend my self and those I love. Ghandi and MLK won their struggles because they fought against relatively democratic and free societies. In Hitler's Germany or Stalins USSR they would have been taken out and shot and their followers put in concentration camps. Both were assassinated, but not by the governments they rebelled against. For their causes, passive resistance was an effective means, but it is not always so.

My answer: "No, I do not."

sw

but not such a great realist.

A much more intelligent quote on the subject;

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.

~Aldous Huxley

War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder.

~Alexander Berkman

O peace! how many wars were waged in thy name.

~Alexander Pope