Thread by @ThyConsigliori

22 April 2021 #MAGAanalysis

FDTD – The Preface Can Be The Most Personal Part

Prefaces and Forewords are almost always written after the book has been completed. How do you know what you're going to say before you've said it? These two quotes are from Sharp's Preface.

2) Points:

* The prevention of tyranny might be possible
* Successful struggles against dictatorships could be waged
* And waged without mutual slaughter
* Dictatorships could be destroyed
* New dictatorships could be prevented from rising out of the ashes of the old

3) Points:

* The fall of one regime does not bring a utopia
* Hard work and long efforts follow
* The goal is more just social, economic, and political relationships
* The goal is the eradication of other forms of injustices and oppression

4) Who is a man? What does he live for? If you read the 5 pages of Sharp's Preface seeking the man himself, you will find him. Never read a book without looking for its author. Books are not merely dry, intellectual exercises. They are the life work of those who speak in writing.

5) Some souls are more sensitive than others. I know absolutely nothing about Gene Sharp's life outside of his writings. But his writings teach me that he was an incredibly sensitive soul. He felt the horrors, the terrors, and agonies of all those crushed by dictators.

6) If, like me, you would truly understand and comprehend Sharp's message, you need to be able to feel the integrity of the man himself. His Preface is the one and only place in this book where you can find him.

7) At but 25 years old, this was his 1st book: Gandhi Wields the Weapon of Moral Power: Three Case Histories, Foreword by Albert Einstein. Introduction by Bharatan Kumarappa. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1960.

8) Did Sharp influence Martin Luther King, Jr in his efforts for Civil Rights, accomplished by means of non-violent strategies and tactics? I don't know. I do know that the circle of students of Gandhi was not large. I have to imagine a Sharp/King connection.

9) It was the future United States of America that first, as a colony, defeated the British Empire in its evil powers. Conquest can be the most evil of all motivations. Tyranny is always evil in large and in small. Gandhi is the descendent of the American Revolution.

10) But Gandhi is also the discoverer of the principle of nonviolence. Let's consider that principle. No citizen may violently oppose his government. The government has power such that violent opposition is treason, which may be shot at dawn.

11) In American terms, peaceful protest is protected by the 1st Amendment. As long as the protest remains nonviolent, it is legal. Here is our power. We may protest nonviolently. This is Sharp's gift to us. We may protest, and we may win. We may save America.

12) The dead feel no pain. It is their survivors who suffer. A tyranny does not execute its enemies as a punishment. It does so as a threat. You, who live, must fear the threat of death, of torture and execution. Death is not the threat. The horror of death is.

13) A body may be tortured by many means. I am a severe diabetic, and while in intensive care, I suffered the torture of days of dehydration. I have suffered kidney stones as well. Their passing is also a form of natural torture.

14) The difference is this. I have never been tortured by a person with a purpose. So, I don't know how I'd endure under the threat of my fingernails being pulled out. I'd like to imagine I'd not bend. I'm very likely wrong. I probably would.

15) The ability to be tortured and to die for one's nation is the true definition of patriotism. The land of the free and the home of the brave exists due to the extraordinary capability of those who can do so. I honor them each day I awaken.

16) This is what I ask of you. Join me. Be a student. Study the life works of the authors on my list of required readings. Embrace these studies as your own great act of patriotism.

17) We were told in 1776 that these are the times that try men's souls. Here it is 2021 and the same message rings true. Then, it was the British government we needed to repulse. Today it is our own. But dictatorship is just dictatorship. Tyranny is tyranny.

18) America is the nation that created freedom. Our freedom is the hope of the world. If our freedom falls, the world's will follow suit. Tyranny is easy. Freedom is difficult.

19) Gene Sharp and I would disagree about a great deal, were he alive and he and I to debate. But I would bow in honored respect were I to have had the opportunity. He was a freedom fighter in the truest sense.

20) Reading his preface, I feel the power and integrity of the man.

I hope you will too.

Thread ends at #20.

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