Man, They Didn't Teach This About Gandhi In School Options

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q...zdkMjE2YmEyNTY

Besides coolers and mattresses, protesters have brought along a giant paper mache statue of Mahatma Gandhi, who is pretty much the symbol of the anti-war movement. Code Pink was founded on his birthday, and when Saddam Hussein was being given a last chance to open Iraq to U.N. weapons inspectors, posters appeared around America asking “What would Gandhi do?”

And that’s a pretty good question. At what point is it okay to fight dictators like Saddam or the al Qaeda terrorists who want to take his place?

It turns out that the answer, according to Gandhi, is NEVER. During World War II, Gandhi penned an open letter to the British people, urging them to surrender to the Nazis. Later, when the extent of the holocaust was known, he criticized Jews who had tried to escape or fight for their lives as they did in Warsaw and Treblinka. “The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife,” he said. “They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.” “Collective suicide,” he told his biographer, “would have been heroism.”

Greetings 'Cloud Hex',

This sounds interesting but your link is broken. Please repost the link.

Peace

howdy, all

yep, the ultimate sacrifice - give up everything, even your very life, for your pacifis ideals

similar to those who botch the wiccan rede to mean they shouldn't ever raise shields against another - i have seen these people and they are truthful to their pacifistic beliefs, usually ex-hippies who want all the world powers to destroy their arms (who left christianity cause its 'fighting' instead of turn the other cheek)

i'm not a pacifist, or a wiccan for that matter - i am a witch and i can bless or bind just as nature can

go to give it up for ghandi, though, but wait - did he actuall practice what he preached? - easy to talk the talk, but a lot harder to walk the walk in this case

es

I never particularly catered to Ghandi's ideals anyway. Its human nature to act out of violence under enough pressure, the same is true for peace when its warrented. Weather we're talking about a couple argueing or nations threatening nuclear holocust people are inherently violent. I do believe peace should be the first step towards any protest or revolution. However in the case of revolution its not wise to give your adversarial government a chance to stamp you out first. I think one of the biggest "sins" a person can commit is deny their own human instincts. Ghandi in my opinion, while admirable in his positive accomplishments, holds unrealistic beliefs.

Another Ghandi quote you won't hear in our PC schools is "'Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest."

BTW, the reason Ghandi chose to protest the way he did, is he knew that he was facing a humanitarian enemy who would care about him. If it was, say, the Chinese that were ruling India at the time, they would have just let him die. Pacifism at all costs is a foolish outlook. ghandi knew what he was up against and how to best defeat that enemy.

Hello, this is my first ever post!

Anyway, Gandhi said:

If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest Gentile German might, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance, but would have confidence that in the end the rest were bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy [...] the calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the God-fearing, death has no terror

From Wikipedia

Gandhi was highly criticized for these statements and responded in the article "Questions on the Jews: "Friends have sent me two newspaper cuttings criticizing my appeal to the Jews. The two critics suggest that in presenting non-violence to the Jews as a remedy against the wrong done to them, I have suggested nothing new....what I have pleaded for is renunciation of violence of the heart and consequent active exercise of the force generated by the great renunciation."

It may help to consider that Gandhi was a yogi. He practiced a Yoga. Part of it was non-violence. Part of it was celibacy. Part of it was simplicity in living. Mr. G trained his mind/body urges towards these goals. I think we should commend him for being true to his practices for the most part.

Read the Gita. A short work. Gandhi’s favorite. It takes place on a battle field. In it Krishna is telling Arjuna that it his duty to fight! To kill his cousins, uncles, brothers, friends, faces he’s known since he was a child.

Myself, I’ve been a pacifist as long as I can remember. But I side with Robert Anton Wilson, who said “I am not the same kind of pacifist as Gandhi or Joan Baez. I am not as ‘moral’ as those noble souls, and certainly not as dogmatic or self-righteous.”

Peace.