The myth of the “Cycle of Violence”
Bookworm on Mar 26 2008 at 9:35 am | Filed under: Israel, Media matters, Palestinians
In the Leftist world of moral equivalence, there is no right or wrong, there are just cycles, with everything being a meaningless tit-for-tat. In this world, you simply assign blame, not by conduct and intent, but by Leftist assigned “level of oppression.” HonestReporting has a good little video exposing the dishonesty behind this world view.
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5 Responses to “The myth of the “Cycle of Violence””
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I just wanted to say this short video packed a punch and the background score - with no voiceover - was powerful.
Hello Bookworm,
For myself, Bookworm, I believe there is a “Cycle of Violence”. However, far from the moral equivalence of the Left, I think it is appropriate, indeed, sometimes absolutely necessary to apply concentrated violence against those hostile to your people for your own self-defense. Like the video in your link, there is no moral equivalence between Israel’s actions and the Palestinian atrocities.
In the case of Israel, I think if the Palestinian question were to be erased, there would still be violence against Israel by their surrounding Muslim neighbors. If the “Cycle of Violence” is the unending chain reaction of violence constantly rippling across the world, then I don’t see the violence ending in the Middle East or anywhere any time soon. I think the West have been delaying it and pushing it back for over a generation. I think there will come a time when either Israel will utterly vanquish their Muslim neighbors in the Mideast or the Muslims will defeat Israel.
Peace is the anomaly in the history of Mankind, not war. War and conflict is the constant, and I don’t think it would cease. Vanquishing your enemy would probably provide about about a generation of peace. Your people will survive and your culture would continue.
However, this again does not mean there isn’t a right and a wrong. It was right of us to stomp the British in 1812; it was right of us to stomp Mexico in the Mexican-American War; it was right of us to stomp the Spanish (who was committing genocide in Cuba); it was right of us to stomp Nazi Germany; and it was right of us to stomp (albeit a relatively peaceful stomping) the Soviets.
There is no moral equivalence there. But war does not end, either.
Indeed, the attempt to end the so-called “Cycle of Violence” lead the West in the 20th century to Utopian schemes that created the most God-awful atrocities the world has ever seen, Communism and Fascism, both secular schemes to achieve Heaven on Earth and promised the end of war (There is a reason they called the first World War “The War To End All Wars”).
Thomas: As the Aussies say (or at least used to say), “Too right.”
The Cycle of VIolence: A Socratic Dialogue
Ymar: The cycle of violence never really lasts long enough to become a cycle since just by killing someone, you end any cycle they could ever bring about.
Pacifist: When you kill a person just for fighting for what he believes in, you make him into a martyr, and martyrs motivate others into taking revenge. Thus the conflict becomes greater in scope and the cycle of violence begins once again.
Ymar: A nuke will take care of all those people that want to escalate the violence in the “cycle of violence”
Pacifist: Such an action will make you a pariah in the world, uniting everyone else against you. Instead of eliminating someone, you just give them more allies.
Ymar: Dead people and nations can’t have allies.
Pacifist: You’d still have to fight wars with every nation on earth if you are willing to massacre people with nukes. This demonstrates that whenever you escalate the violence in an attempt to end the cycle, you just make the cycle worse.
Ymar: You make a convincing argument. I guess I’ll have to reconsider whether slaves in the South and anti-slavery advocates in the Republican north really were justified in starting up a cycle of violence to end slavery.
Pacifist: Every individual and culture has a right to resist occupation and oppression.
Ymar: But you just said that killing people and escalating things just makes the cycle of violence worse. Last time I checked, killing people via war was an escalation on owning and beating slaves. Obviously the cycle of violence can end if one side stops fighting and just dies.
Pacifist: World opinion and the force of morality will not let the side that refuses to engage in violence die out completely. It may take a million or a billion, but our people will survive through pacifism because our enemies will grow tired of killing, war, and violence. Easy victories make those engaged in the cycle of violence soft. Hard victories brings on the rage to kill and the need to revenge, furthering the cycle of violence.
Ymar: Oh, I get it. The only thing that will end the cycle of violence to you folks is the cycle of slavery. The cycle of slavery, which was ended by war in the US. Given that,
Pacifist: Hold on, it wasn’t war that ended slavery, it was political reconciliation. The political reconciliation Israel and Bush haven’t done.
Ymar: Given that the “political reconciliation” in the South included bringing Democrats to power by using KKK lynch tactics and Black Codes to disenfranchise blacks, it is still you people using the cycle of slavery to justify the cycle of violence. You people want the cycle of violence to continue on, because if it ever ended, so would your justifications that are based upon oppression and economic excuses. You need people to be in a cycle of slavery, don’t you. You need it so that you can use it to justify violence to “resist occupation”. Except violence never ends if either side keeps fighting, according to you, , so therefore logically speaking slavery will and must never end as well. Because if slavery ever ended because of violence, then this would break the cycle of slavery. And without the never-ending cycle of slavery the Democrats instigated in this nation, a cycle of violence would never develop… now would it.
Democrat: It is the Republicans sustaining institutional racism in this country. If it wasn’t for that, blacks would not be motivated into violence.
Palestinian: It is the Israelis, not our leader Arafat, that is sustaining this cycle of violence between we who want peace and the Israelis who want land and power. It is the Israelis motivating us to violence by their actions.
Pacifist: Peaceful activism makes the cycle of slavery end, not violence. If you drop your arms and stop fighting, you will stop motivating the other side to fight as well. It is your belief that you must fight that is causing the cycle of violence to spread, which will kill many more millions, many of them children, in the future. Because Israel has the most military power in the conflict, if they stop then the Palestinians will no longer have the fear of violence to motivate them into fighting.
Ymar: If it wasn’t for Americans fighting and dying in wars, all of you peeps would have been hanged and tortured by the Inquisition already. I hate death merchants, sitting in places of luxury and safety, selling arms to both sides so that their cycle of profit continues unabated. Given a choice between the cycle of violence and the cycle of slavery, I will choose violence over slavery every time. Good for me, bad for the death merchants depending upon the cycle of violence/profit/slavery to keep them in the black.
Communism and Fascism, both secular schemes to achieve Heaven on Earth and promised the end of war
Slavery is the solution of the allies of the enemies of humanity to violence. “Resistance” is the solution to slavery as they see it. By sustaining a never ending cycle of the two, violence/resistance and slavery, they get two for the price of one.
Wars will end, once slavery becomes forever. Slavery will end, once war becomes forever. Two for the price of one people.
“Don’t the media have an obligation to tell the whole story?”
Not particularly. Why would mass murderers have an obligation to make the deaths of their victims less painful? That’s what not what they are for, you know.