Reflection on the King Conspiracy

Whether or not Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s death was planned by the government or by individual people is a moot point now since it is long since past. The need for the king family to bring the evidence to light was based upon a past event. The intention behind the trial was the truth behind the incident. This is irrelevant if you look at it as a past event, it needs to be focused on making the government more transparent so that incidents such as this cannot happen again. Raking over the past and getting the government riled up at being convicted of conspiracy in a murder, even if it is merely in a civil trial. The important victory this trial had is the increasing transparency of the government over an incident which they did not completely investigate, regardless of whether it was an actual government conspiracy or a small group of the government which acted independently of the whole. The truth of the matter is not evident within that article and more evidence is required to make an educated decision, but the true victory is their conviction of the government for conspiracy in something which was covered up.
“David Morphy, the only juror to grant an interview, said later: "We can look back on it and say that we did change history. But that's not why we did it. It was because there was an overwhelming amount of evidence and just too many odd coincidences.”
This quote does not show proof that what they decided was the truth, the evidence was largely circumstantial with no proof that any person was ordered from high up in the government to act in the way the local officers did. The evidence was also not nearly strong enough for a criminal case since a lot was hearsay, unsworn evidence, and circumstantial, however it was still a major victory for transparency.

Satyagraha

Gandhi was a hypocrite when it comes to his methods of soul force on occasion. This is to be expected be cause he was only human and his methods of nonviolence were not perfect. “As was to be expected, Gandhi’s political realism triumphed over his moral idealism, and, despite his claims to the contraty, his satyāgrahas were not always purely spiritual in nature” (Parekh, 71). Political realism causes all sorts of tarnishes to ideals when they confront each other. The political pressure induced by work stoppages, and economic issues which Ghandi raised are very effective, but none of them had the strength of the ture satyāgraha which Gandhi tried to use; they were not based upon the power of love. Does this hurt Gandhi’s motives or the strength of his work? No, he merely used what was effective and nonviolent; the true force behind all of them does not matter as long as certain lines are not crossed. In that respect, Gandhi certainly did the right thing.

Gandhi on Rationality

Ghandi reminds me somewhat of Plato and Socrates in his take on reasoned argument being the best manner. Socrates used his Socratic method to prove that nobody knows anything by taking apart people’s beliefs through analysis of the minutia of their beliefs and the lack of certainty they have of the grey areas. “Since hyman beings are fallible and partial, each should make a sincere effort to look at the disputed subject from the other’s point of view” (64) Ghandi used this to mean that you should understand where the other person is coming from, while Socrates used this to find the weaknesses in the arguments which people felt were strong.
The difference here is that Socrates is focused on true knowledge, whereas Ghandi uses reason and debate for problem resolution. This demonstrates that Ghandi is the more moral person in the comparison. However, Ghandi realized that the biggest problem with reason is the same problem that Socrates faced: that people will not listen to it calmly and accept what you have to say. While Socrates was executed for people’s unwillingness to listen to him, Ghandi developed a new method of making people willing to step into each other’s shoes. Ghandi’s ‘soul-force’ is simple emotional blackmail used without violence. This makes it powerfully effective against most people, but it still does not work against the callous or the powerful when media is not watching. The weakness of this new method is it still requires someone who is pliable, though the only unpliable people are those who have little to no pity and do not have their supporters watching on TV or other media.

Reflection on Voluntary Servitude

La Boétie chooses to ignore one fact about tyranny which explains why it can happen so simply. It does not matter if a single person gives his or her support to the tyrant, it matters when a majority choose to support him over any other option. “Obviously there is no need of fighting to overcome this single tyrant, for he is automatically defeated if the country refuses consent to its own enslavement.” This emphasizes the point that it must be the whole country (or at least a significant amount of it) which chooses to rebel against the tyrant, either nonviolently or violently. The individual or small group which does not submit to tyranny can be put down through violent means, but the large group will keep refreshing numbers if it is being repressed beyond what is reasonable. La Boétie also reduces the number of people needed to keep they tyrant in power; it is really the police and the military which he has command over which does that for him, if the military were to turn against him, it would be a bloodless revolution since he draws his coercive powers from them.

Reflection on Wink

The command to love thy neighbor and to go the extra mile is rather typical of the teachings of the New Testament. There are many possible reasons behind this teaching which were not examined in the text, one which I feel is more likely to be accurate than the ones which are included in the text written by Walter Wink. The basis behind this idea is conversion of Roman soldiers to Christianity when they see how polite and helpful the members of this religion are. This interpretation depends on the fact that the gospels were written well after the time of Jesus and during a time of severe repression of the Christians (this was after they had separated themselves from the Jews as a separate religion/cult). The forcing of the uninvolved citizens to carry military packs for a mile shows the amount of power which was being exerted over them by the military and demonstrates the fact that violence will pervade their lives, especially since they would usually have to be coerced into carrying the pack. However carrying for a mile farther than you had to would demonstrate your willingness to do your part without committing an act of violence. This would make it a nonviolent act which would have the additional benefit of making the religion seem better than it previously appeared and the potential to gain new converts. This also makes the people seem more self serving than before, but makes them more likely to do it, since people do not appreciate doing things which are not in their self interest.

Reflection on Page

Page skates around one issue slightly in his text. The chief reason why coercion can be justified is in cases where there is some form of violence with either of the two options (not to suggest that there have to be a mere two). It is only in cases like these that coercion needs to be used in order to reduce the amount of suffering. Page touched upon this issue when mentioning crime: that if you ignore the criminals, the victims suffer; if you punish them to harshly, the criminals suffer. Another argument that Kirby introduces but does not use sufficiently is the case where someone’s mind is going and they have a lack of self control. This example allows the suffering to be primarily put onto one person to prevent that person from causing more suffering to other people. This is the distinction which I feel Page should draw, since he concluded that there are insufficiently good means of nonviolent coercion.

There must be justifiable violence since in many cases it comes down that only violent methods can be used. However there still must be a moral choice for the situation, since one option must be better than the other. This option would be the one where the least suffering is occurring as a result of the decision. Therefore violence must be moral in certain circumstances to reduce the total amount of violence.