Beyond Guns or Government

Peace must be learned. If we want peace, we can't get it by outlawing violence. And neither is it peace, real, genuine peace, if we are merely protecting ourselves by threatening violence against others. We must imagine a world beyond this, envision it, and begin to move our reality past these old paradigms of fear.

Bob Koehler expresses this idea so well. He is one of the few I know that is willing to explore real-world ways of moving past relying on either guns or government to resolve violent conflicts. His latest post, on his website Common Wonders, is a wonderful case in point.  He contrasts the predictable response to a recent tragic shooting in Chicago against a non-violent conflict resolution program being used in a Chicago school. He tells the story of how this program was used to defuse a situation that could have turned horribly wrong, and instead led to a most amazingly positive result.

Please read Bob's full essay:
http://commonwonders.com/peace/lasting-peace/

And the original story by Robert Spicer, who was the leader of the program in the school:
http://ibarji.ning.com/profiles/blogs/a-hand-shake-a-hug-and-basketball-our-journey-using-restorative

Some people have realized that if we want peace, we need to put a high priority on teaching children about peace. What a concept.

Gandhi - Hijacked

First MLK, now Gandhi. More blatant distortions, mis-interpretations and out-of-context citations from gun-rights activists, this time co-opting and mis-appropriating Gandhi to support their cause.

On the one hand, we should be thankful that this is coming up, because it provides an opportunity to get a more nuanced view of Gandhi. He was not a saint, and he lived in the real world, responding to serious crises. His philosophy evolved over time, as occurs with any thinking person who responds critically when one's pre-conceptions are challenged by new experiences and inspirations.

So here's some relevant Gandhi quotes:

"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.” 

“I do believe that where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence I would advise violence.”

Etcetera. This article from Mike Adams of Natural News (re-posted at InfoWars, and I'm sure many others)  has lots more quotes:
http://www.infowars.com/gandhi-advocated-the-right-to-bear-arms-use-of-violence-to-defend-innocents-against-bullying-oppression/

But the flaws and fallacies of this article are many. An excellent article from the website Waging Nonviolence http://wagingnonviolence.org/2013/02/what-gandhi-really-thought-about-guns/
adds some clarity to the discussion:

"Pro-gun activists frequently use those words to suggest that Gandhi supported individual gun ownership both as a means of defending oneself and as a tool to violently resist government tyranny...that Gandhi supported violence to defend oneself and others.  This is a vast oversimplification of Gandhi’s views.
In truth, Gandhi did not oppose the use of violence in certain circumstances, preferring it to cowardice and submission.  Even though Gandhi’s spiritual philosophy of ahimsa rejects violence, it permits the use of violent force if a person is not courageous and disciplined enough to use nonviolence.  Gandhi regarded weakness as the lowest human flaw, and would rather see a person use violent force in self-defense than be passive."

The article goes on to provide solid historical information that adds much needed historical context to the quote.

Context is everything, and those who cite this quote are being willfully misleading. They fail to point out that even though Gandhi allowed for the possibility of violence, it was as a last resort for those who were unwilling or unable to adopt the practice of non-violence, which was clearly what he preferred people to do. He spent his whole life teaching non-violence, practicing personal non-violence and making non-violence the centerpiece of his campaigns against British oppression. It seems ridiculous to even have to remind anyone that it is his practice of non-violence that has made him such an influential historical figure, not any perceived advocacy for the right to bear arms.

Gandhi's attitude towards guns and violence shows his acknowledgement of free will. If a person has no other recourse, and has not gained the courage and insight necessary to practice non-violence, then Gandhi says better to use violence than be a coward. But he is clear that non-violence is what we need to strive for, study and practice, so that we may finally move beyond violent response altogether.

It takes far more courage and strength of character to practice non-violence, indeed it is a deep and challenging spiritual practice for the real world. That is what he helped the Indian people achieve, and what his legacy calls on us to try to do.

I understand what Mike Adams, Alex Jones and others like them are worried about. Every day brings new information that adds credibility to the concern that our government is heading in a direction of becoming an authoritarian regime. But that is no excuse for peddling mis-information in order to stir people who don't know any better into an ever increasing state of fear, anxiety and hatred. It undermines the credibility of everything else that media commentators like Adams and Jones do, which is too bad because they often provide genuinely useful information. But you can also see in their work that they thrive on perpetuating a state of fear, not on offering genuine solutions. We must continue to shine the light of truth on these issues, and keep pushing forward on the path that Gandhi has laid out for us.

The Hijacking of Martin Luther King

It has become an annual tradition for somebody who is selling some idea totally antithetical to what Martin Luther King believed, to declare that King "would have approved." I wrote about one such story in a blog post from 2011, "Pentagon Celebrates Martin Luther King Day?" in which I broke down the absurdity of a Defense Department lawyer's claim that Dr. King would approve of war, as long as it's in response to the threat of terrorism.

Now here we are again, another MLK day, and here are more absurd self-serving distortions of Dr. King.

Larry Ward, a political consultant who created the National Gun Appreciation series of pro-gun rights events that occurred last weekend, went on CNN to proclaim that he wanted to “honor the legacy of Dr. King.” Pretending to tip his hat to Dr. King, blacks and civil rights activists, he went so far as to say that slavery may never have happened in the United States if African-Americans had owned guns.

Shall we unpack this to show how ridiculous it is? No, the other commentator on the show took care of that:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/11/gun-appreciation-day-chairman-slavery-wouldnt-have-happened-if-slaves-were-armed/

We could just mention that Larry Ward's business is, plain and simple, Republican party public relations. As always, many people who were part of the recent gun appreciation events do not know or care that the main interest of its organizers is not about gun rights, it's about Republican party politics.
http://politicalmedia.com/about

Perhaps we should point out that a few days after going on his press push, it was revealed that one of Mr. Ward's sponsors for the event is American Third Position, an explicitly white racist political organization. So who is Mr. Ward trying to kid?
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/01/18/gun-appreciation-day-is-sponsored-by-a-white-na/192318

But the mis-representation of Martin Luther King goes further. Some recently published articles are being cited to point out that at one time in the mid-1950's, during an intense period of violent attacks on civil rights activists, Martin Luther King kept guns for self-protection.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-winkler/mlk-and-his-guns_b_810132.html

A shallow reading of the article (and they count on that) would suggest that King would have endorsed today's pro-gun rights activism. What is ignored or marginalized is the fact that over time, Dr. King moved further and further in the direction of complete non-violence, and eventually renounced guns altogether.

The point of this story being shared at this exact moment is clearly to attempt to overshadow and implicitly belittle King's monumental later commitment to non-violence. It is also meant to ridicule people that think King was always completely against violence and guns - as if to say, "ha ha, wrong again you naive liberals. King appreciated the value of a gun just as much as any gun rights supporter, until he so foolishly went in the wrong direction."
http://www.redstate.com/candicelanier/2013/01/17/mlks-arsenal-the-racist-roots-of-gun-control-in-the-u-s/

It is amazing indeed to see hard-line conservative writers twisting themselves into knots to try to make this argument work (as, for example, when their argument forces them to come down on the same side as the radical Black Panthers of the 1960's.). But it fails because it so obviously tries to re-define King by extracting one little slice of his vast and complex life and using it out of context to score a political point.

The fact is, it is central to understanding King to know that his ideas about non-violence evolved over time. His eventual renunciation of guns and violent action was an amazing accomplishment in his life. At the same time he was showing that like any intelligent person, he was capable of changing his views when presented with credible new ideas. The life and work of Gandhi were very powerful and credible indeed. Encountering, learning and absorbing Gandhi gradually changed King's life, in a dramatic way. This is the rest of the story, and the failure to tell it in relation to the story of his earlier gun ownership is not just willfully ignorant, but  intellectually dishonest and disrespectful. For more on how Dr. King's indeas developed, read this excellent article:
http://peacemagazine.org/archive/v17n2p21.htm

This leads me to a related observation: one cannot in good conscience ignore the racism that continues to assert itself in our country.

The clues are sometimes subtle, as in this news report from ABC's 20/20 on the "myths" of gun control.. Notice at about 2:30, when the scene changes to a prison, and the color of the skin of the people on camera makes a point without needing any words.



But sometimes the racism is so blatant it is sickening, especially when, as in Mississippi, it is occurring against children, perpetrated by authorities in the schools, the police and the judicial system.
http://morallowground.com/2013/01/20/report-extreme-racialized-discipline-plagues-mississippi-schools/

It makes me think that gun rights advocates ought to look with great suspicion on the political motivations of their leadership, and their willingness to partner with racists while they pretend to sympathize with Dr. King.

So where does Truth Dots stand on gun rights issues? Well as always, I stand outside of either-or.

On the one hand, it seems futile to support greater governmental involvement in restricting gun ownership, when our government reserves the right to wield vast amounts of the most destructive weaponry in the world, and directs our military to kill with impunity. But we are stuck there, aren't we, because we willingly give our government that power. In fact we are conditioned to think of violence as heroic and even patriotic, as long as it's directed by the institutional "us," the good guys.

Here is another area where Dr. King's position gradually became unequivocal, and in 1967 he took the exceptionally bold step of publicly condemning the U.S. government's perpetration of violence around the world as well as at home. This is another aspect of King's legacy that is willfully neglected and even intentionally distorted by many. But in the year before he died he made it quite clear what he thought.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html

There is no better symbol of governmental hypocrisy than President Obama himself. Obama enjoys being the beneficiary of King's civil rights legacy, and clumsily quotes King, incorrectly and out of context, to improve his own image. But Obama's record of commanding violent and destructive military actions goes against everything King stood for. In an even more bizarre twist, during his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech (for which he had done literally nothing to deserve), Obama both cited King as an influence and utterly repudiated him in the same speech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AORo-YEXxNQ

I broke this down in more detail in my earlier post:
http://truth-dots.blogspot.com/2011/01/pentagon-celebrates-martin-luther-king.html

On the other hand, I have heard so many times that 99% of all gun owners are patriotic, responsible, well trained, full of wisdom and common sense. It is pretty easy to see that this is not really so cut and dried. I'm not talking about anyone I know, of course. But I am sure this, this, this and this barely scratch the surface of the large numbers of angry, ignorant and careless people, many of whom are in positions of influence and authority, who insist on carrying guns. This troubles me greatly, and that feeling is amplified by adding in the possibility of racist attitudes and emotional instability into the stew.

Am I exaggerating? I don't know, what do you think? When you have an authority figure like this ex-military/ex-police chief/professional weapons trainer going on YouTube, vowing to take to the streets and start killing people in the name of preserving his 2nd amendment rights and urging others to do the same, I think I have a point.


I don't have a problem with anyone claiming their constitutional rights. What I object to is the way people on both "sides" of this issue constantly respond and react out of fear. Indeed, we are constantly being pushed by authority figures and the media to believe we only have two choices: support one position, or be very afraid of what will happen. You must support unrestricted right to carry guns - the only alternative is to cower in fear. Or you must support greatly expanded government restrictions on guns, or else - that's right, cower in fear.

This choice is phony. It dis-empowers us and it denies the human capacity for creative, innovative thinking, for compassion and courage. We must move past this fake either-or paradigm and stand up for the highest spiritual and ethical principles at every level, starting from the personal to the family and community, instead of expecting our society's institutions to somehow change the way they've always been, just because we demand it.

Bob Koehler gives us a window into one powerful approach to this:
http://commonwonders.com/peace/unarmed-empowerment/

But there are a million ways, big and small. Find your own way. And always, always refer to Martin Luther King himself, not other people's mis-interpretations of him.



UPDATE: 
The Air Force Global Strike Command wants you to know that Martin Luther King would be proud of them for overcoming racial, cultural and religious differences in order to "ensure perfection as we maintain and operate... the most powerful weapons in the U.S. arsenal." 
http://www.afgsc.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123333051

Well that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, how about you?

Together On The Journey

In this blog, I hope to not only to search for the deeper truth behind the appearances of current events, but also to pursue the idea that personal transformation and spiritual development, person by person,  are essential for there to be any hope of turning around the deterioration of our society as a whole.

The story of Arthur Boorman, a man with a lot of serious health issues who changed his life in a few months with the help of an unconventional yoga instructor, is a wonderful example of this. His story is incredibly inspirational in all the best ways. Arthur shows us:

• that it is possible for ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things;
• you can overcome the most difficult obstacles, and you can exceed what you think of as your limitations;
• hard work and determination are essential;

But there is more to this. There are lessons that go much deeper, and things for all of us to seriously take to heart.

Did you have a moment when you watched Arthur's story where you thought about saying to a loved one or friend, "Look, see, Arthur did it, what's your problem?"
Sounds un-compassionate and judgmental, and it is. Yet people respond this way all the time: "I choose to eat healthy. What's your problem?" "Why don't you just exercise your free will like I did, and choose to quit smoking/drinking/eating junk food/watching the crap on TV?"

This kind of response misses the critical point that changing behaviors of a lifetime is often incredibly difficult, especially when resisted by the pressures of lifelong habits and addictions, poor self-esteem and other emotional issues, poor education, financial difficulties, as well as the influence of family, community, culture, media and commercial psychological warfare.



Arthur's story teaches us another whole set of lessons. Look at what happened:

• Arthur realized he needed to change.
• He realized he couldn't do it alone, he needed help,
• He reached out, searched and found help. 
• He accepted the help that awakened him to his own sense of personal power, and inspired him to do the work he needed to do to revitalize his health. 

The steps he took afterwards are also very important. When he appeared in this and other videos, he sent some vital messages:

• he expressed his gratitude for the help he got;
• he turned it around to help others by inspiring them with his story.

We all need to hear this, because each of us may some day find ourselves on either side of this situation: we may be the one who needs help, or we may be the one who can offer it.

Arthur is very strong and courageous; he struggled and worked incredibly hard. But part of his strength was in opening himself up to being helped, overcoming fear, isolation and feeling hopelessly stuck in his troubles. It also takes strength to change your priorities in life, which Arthur had to do. On his testimonial page at the DDP Yoga website, he talks about realizing he had to change his eating habits, and says, "I was communicating to my wife and kids –the people I love the most in the world – that I wanted that pizza more than I wanted the years that I would not be able to spend with them."

One of the hardest things about making big changes is distancing yourself from the foods, places, activities and especially people who are not aligned with your new priorities. But Arthur's experience shows that if you are open to it and you ask for it, you will find there are people out there who are ready and willing to help empower you to be the most happy, healthy and awakened person you can be. He also shows that if you think about it, you could be that person for somebody else.

One of those people is Crystal, who has had her own experience with overcoming many serious health issues. Her journey of restoring herself to vibrant good health has led her to create an incredible website/blog, The Queen's Table:
http://thequeenstable.blogspot.com/
In it, she provides a huge resource library of references to books, videos, websites and people that were helpful to her in her own efforts. She is also full of compassion and understanding that everyone is at a different stage of their own journey, and we all need inspiration and support.

Self-empowerment is a central concept here, but I think there should be no distinction between that and spiritual growth. Arthur did not become disdainful, condescending or otherwise egotistical as a result of his success, nor did Crystal. In fact, one frequently witnesses a huge expansion of peace, love, wisdom, humility, compassion, gratitude and forgiveness accompanying such personal transformations. It is all part of the same trip, and we are all taking the ride.




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Robert Koehler: Peace Journalist

I feel very fortunate to have discovered Bob Koehler, a veteran journalist who for many years has turned his talents toward commentary with a mission. His writing has been very inspirational to me, and I would say Bob has figured prominently in motivating me to go forward with this blog.

Bob speaks his mind, with his heart fully engaged, on matters of conscience. He observes and comments on current events, then drills down into them to find the deeper relevance to our humanity. He unfailingly takes a stand firmly on the side that so few seem to consider: the one of compassion, of forgiveness, and most insistently, of non-violent conflict resolution. He insists that we take a hard look at the callousness, the inhumanity, of much of our modern society, but he is also fully confident in our ability to transcend it.

As a career journalist in Chicago, he has the credentials to back up his analysis of current events. He has been an award-winning reporter, editor, and for many years a columnist. Regarding his column, I'll let him describe it for you:

"Since 1999, I’ve written a column that has been nationally syndicated by Tribune Media Services, which is part of the Chicago Tribune. That column was initially called by the name this website still bears, Common Wonders. It started out more personal than political, then, post-9/11, as the Bush administration unleashed its war on terror, I became increasingly focused on current events. I referred to the column as “part political brawl, part secular prayer...”
...I’ve trespassed, as a journo aiming at a mainstream audience, upon the sacred consensus that America is a dumbed down, spectator nation, yet somehow special, God’s Chosen Superpower, the greatest nation on Earth. Let’s get beyond our limited allegiances, I say, and celebrate our wholeness as a species and a planet.
I’ve been called blatantly relevant.
And I have proclaimed myself, ever since coming across the term at Transcend Media Service, a peace journalist.
“Peace journalism is when editors and reporters make choices — about what to report, and how to report it — that create opportunities for society at large to consider and to value nonviolent responses to conflict.” — Jake Lynch

Visit his website, commonwonders.com to keep up with his weekly columns.

While you're there, check out his book, Courage Grows Strong At The Wound.

Bob says:

"The book is a collection of my essays fused into several narratives. They run the gamut from the highly personal (dealing with grief, the death of my wife, single parenting) to the acutely political. The book is about the quest for both inner and outer peace, the urgency of both, and the fragile future we are giving birth to." 

Amazon.com says:

"This spellbinding book is a plea for sanity and disarmament, a celebration of the wonder of life and a cry of faith in an empowering love that can save us."

And a great review of the book can be found here.

I count on Bob's weekly columns to remind me that there is always another aspect to be considered when reporting or commenting on the brutality and injustice of our world: the possibility of non-violent conflict resolution, forgiveness, redemption, and peaceful co-existence. Bob is there to remind us that these are not just the topics of Sunday school sermons, but are in fact essential for our survival and evolution as a species. And he frequently shows us that there are brilliant, courageous people out there in the world right now, doing the hard work of seeking peace.