So Conceived

A new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

So reads a truncated versions of one of the shortest, most eloquent, speeches in American history.
A nation conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal, we are testing once again, whether a nation so conceived, testing the notion of whether government of the people, by the people, for the people, can long endure.

Of course, we were engaged on a great battlefield of a civil war, meeting violence with violence.  It doesn’t have to be that way.

In my last post, which was an au revoir, I described that now I am engaged in a great battlefield of that war – which is to say, pursuing a Masters in Sustainable Peace in the Contemporary World.

By happy coincidence, one of my courses at this time is Nonviolent Transformation of Conflict.  Did you know that nonviolent methods of transforming a conflict are twice as likely to succeed as violent methods?

It is surmised that all political relationships and systems rely on the obedience and cooperation of individuals and groups.  What happen when people refuse to obey?  That is when they engage in nonviolence, or noncooperation.  There, in fact, at least 198 different methods of nonviolent action.  These work in both democracies and autocracies.  We are, of course, familiar with many of these, such as marching, protesting, and writing letters of objection.  Others might have slipped our mind, although we are intimately familiar with them in America, such as tax objection, boycotts, and general strikes.

I am asked what-are-we-going-to-do now!  Of course, there’s a couple options.  Do nothing.  Or Do something.

This nation can not long endure unless we living dedicate ourselves to a government of the people, by the people, for the people, and for that (non-)violent action is required.