Violence must be replied to with violence. The only time I would suggest turning the other cheek is when firing off the left shoulder with a rifle after taking cover in a doorway.
– Perry de Havilland commenting here
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Samizdata quote of the dayJune 8th, 2011 |
 23 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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Er – no.
Two quotes from Sun Tzu will suffice.
‘To subdue the enemy without fighting is the pinnacle of success.’
‘Pretend inferiority, and so encourage your enemy’s arrogance.’ (the Breitbart method, and crushingly effective)
and one from Sollozzo.
‘I don’t like violence, Tom. I’m a businessman. Blood is a big expense.’
Fight if you must – but there is almost-always a more-effective way than violence.
llater,
llamas
Fine sentiments. Also completely irrelevant to the point. Once the violence starts, flapping your lips at them just a provides target datum. Nemo me impune lacessit: words to live by.
Fine sentiments. Also (usually) gloriously ineffective. This is mere braggadocio.
Once the violence starts, flapping your lips at them about how you’re going to kick their a**es in return is a waste of breath, and resources. Much better to have them turn around for more bullets and find – none. Much better than that – to have them run out of bullets without doing you any harm. Slugging it out toe-to-toe is all very Kipling and ‘ats-off to you Fuzzy-Wuzzies, ‘cos you broke a British square – but it’s also (usually) incredibly wasteful and essentially futile.
The Greeks besieged Troy for 10 years and got nowhere, then took it in one night with a simple stratagem.
The D-Day invasion was successful in part becasue a large part of the enemy’s capacity was elsewhere – not engaged in honourable, violent battle, but sitting on their butts because they were misled into being far from the action.
Nemo me impune lacessit are indeed words to live by – but they do not translate to ‘face him like a man!’ The important thing is to win, and not merely to fight. Anyone can do that.
A working copper like our friend Sunfish has seen a thousand street brawls where violence was met with violence, all puffy-chested and righteous, and the end result is two battered protagonists and no winner. If faced with violence, your goal is not to see whether you can suffer just a little less damage than the other guy – your goal is to suppress the other guy with no damage to you at all. That usually means engaging him in a way that’s completely different than the way he’s trying to engage you. As Sun Tzu taught us.
llater,
llamas
Sun Tzu was a sissy.
Yeah whatever llamas.
Yes, well, it depends.
For me, as someone who would like to do everything in the presence of the Lord Jesus, according to His priorities, and His reality, I would be well advised to seek for that more comprehensive reality.
I do fail rather a lot.
Courage is admirable and where a person’s courage leads them to fight then that is his way to cope.
To allow meekness to be weakness is dishonest and destructive.
llamas has a point, but his point is still about winning in this world.
There is more.
It depends where one’s priorities lie and how much one can cope with, I guess.
But I wouldn’t really try turning the other cheek in my own strength. I must just lose my head.
sorry: might just lose my head (the phone rang)
Well the trouble is some people have a deep seated unwillingness to not make it clear what the negative consequences of violence on someone else’s part will be. That is why crapulous threats like the one spouted by a piece of garbage like Richard Glover really really need to replied to in kind: try and tattoo me against my will and not only will I do my best to meet that violence with some of my own, the anyone else who is a supporter of violence against me becomes a legitimate target for violence *by* both me and anyone else they threaten.
Making that clear up front makes it less likely that such threats will ever have to be put into practice.
Llamas’ points are very well made and are well worth keeping in mind – but I have no idea what they have to do with this post. Of course violence is best avoided, and if one can find clever ways to do that, it’s a big win. But that is not always possible – or even advisable. Moreover, the Glover case under discussion is not one where physical violence has already occurred, but rather, here we are dealing with a threat of violence – something best countered with a counter-threat, which, more often than not, often proves to be the most effective way to prevent actual physical violence from occurring..
Agree completely.
1) Waiting for a violent enemy to run out of bullets may depend where you’re standing in line. Those at the back have the luxury of theory.
2) Violence in response to violence should be proportionate, to secure yourself and others, then to use brains instead of brawn. If one never has the hope of peaceful intellect eventually being resorted to, then there is no reason to not descend into a morass of never ending brute force.
Bollocks. The response to violence offered should be overwhelming violence. Then the next offering of violence won’t be made.
This puts me in mind of the case of Albert Dryden (I think that’s his name). Dryden bought himself some land and built a house on it. The council objected. Dryden said “Get lost.” One day the council turned up with the police with the intention of knocking Dryden’s house down. Dryden got out his gun and shot dead the council’s planning officer.
I think he’s out now.
Question: was it worth it? I think it wasn’t.
BTW, I would turn all cheeks if I was firing an SA80 from my left shoulder.
Most would agree with you, Patrick, but keep in mind that the man himself may feel differently.
The question is never “was it worth it?”, rather “was it avoidable?”
2) Violence in response to violence should be proportionate….
Bollocks. The response to violence offered should be overwhelming violence. Then the next offering of violence won’t be made.
So for whatever reason a person slugs me, addressing a perceived wrong for his part, I should cut him in half with a machine gun and set fire to the dying carcass. Then if I feel like it, I’ll ask him what his problem was.
Got it.
Sometimes you can fight fire with fire, but the fire brigades use water for a very good reason- it’s more effective.
As for turning the other cheek, in the proper context, that can work. i’ll bet that if we understood the context, we’d agree with Jesus.
That’s not violence, that’s just the communication technique of the inarticulate. But if someone slugs you in exactly the same way with the intention of making you do something… then it’s machete time. Or you can be his slave, of course.
I don’t rule out calling the cops, if they’re wont to act with vigor. Fewer complications and it doesn’t ruin the rug.
The problem is what do you do when threats are steadily escalating?
At what point do you take them seiously?
Ive been in the unfortunate position of having an armed thug and his cohorts drive me from a job at a detention centre.
It was at the stage of openly diplaying weaponry, assault and constant thretas of worse to come.
I was left with a choice of either violent reprisal or leaving the job. I left.
The point being threats of violence, even actual assaults werent “serious” enough to make my employer (government) take action. Any action I took would have been seen as “terrible”..
Threats of violence are, in some cases, merely paving the way for extreme violence later on.
It also invites retaliation (apparently disproportionate) which may be seen as out of proportion to the threats, again legitimising extreme violence later.
Its a bastard of a problem to get out of.
thefrollickingmole… sounds dreadful! But this is exactly why it is so important to have an environment where threats of violence such as you were subject to leads to said thugs being met with an armed response. Of course your employers should have been the people stepping up to the plate, not you making some suicidal gesture.
The point is that when thugs feel they can threaten with impunity, as was clearly the case in your situation as it appears you were not supported, then thuggish behaviour is inevitable.
Patrick Crozier – I once made the mistake of firing a right handed bullpup from the left shoulder. A burst lip taught me not to do it again.
Many of my rifles are left handed, however, designed to be fired from the left shoulder and, SWMBO permitting, I’m considering buying another one.
It occurs that the above is something that I would have been very unlikely to write, had we remained in England. As for my left handed revolver…
Thanks to the mole for making Perry’s point… 🙂
(OK, I’m grumpy today, don the asbestos suit… )
@thefrollickingmole:
You signed up for an immoral job and as a consequence, bad things happen. (…duh…)
The situation you found yourself in exists because the bullies (aka your customers) and their behaviour (the reason for your employment) are tolerated due to it being a nice little earner for everyone concerned — not because of ‘threats’, those are part and parcel of your business(just like puke is normal in pub toilets), and lucky for you, most of them don’t mean it, or your kind would have long died out (literally).
If people were allowed to meet your customers’ threats and violence with ‘proportionate’ violence those psychopaths would die out rather quickly (or be too knackered to bother decent folks afterwards).
It’s people like you who make a living from criminals who are the actual problem, not the crims, because you shield them with your bent morals out of professional interest. So, they ran you out of a job, and that is your story and we’re supposed to feel sorry for you, never mind what they actually do to the rest of the world when they aren’t messing around with your for fun a bit — but let’s not go at them with threats or violence, because they may get even more violent than they already are (…10% extra free?…)
People like that need to be put down because it’s not what they do, it’s what they are that’s the basic problem with them. Whether they have killed or not is only a matter of time in their case, so the obvious answer is to remove their time.
And don’t come with ‘the death penalty has a danger of miscarriage of justice’ BS either, because those toerags you work for(and whinge about to us) kill far more people than would ever die from judges/juries that make mistakes. Besides that, if I have a choice of where I get unlucky, I pick the state executioner every time, instead of dying in a DIY executions like being left to freeze to death tied up in duct tape after a robbery or slowly dying in a hospital due to organ failure and all the other ways that your ‘pets’ kill their victims.
—
For Perry’s cheek quotes collection: ‘Those who present first one cheek and then the other will end up spanked on all four.’
Brad:
You are a dolt.
If we look at history we can examine Masada, not the Jewish propoganda but what it meant at the time to the world.
The Romans didn’t devote a legion and years to wiping out a bunch of rebels with proportionate force. They demonstrated that they would use overwhelming resources and devote all the time it took to destroying their enemies-NO MATTER THE TIME OR COST.
To use your example, cutting the offender in half guarantees all who witnessed the act will not offend nor bother you-EVER.
The offender will most certainly not offend.
You might recall what was done to Germany and Japan. The violence inflicted upon them was not proportional. In the 1950s when we had adults, before MAD, the Soviets knew overwhelming destruction would rain down them if they attempted anything.
I wonder how you negotiate with someone who sells videos of a beheading to entertain his followers? How does one deal with someone who straps suicide vests on retards and little children?