From: jdd@aiki.demon.co.uk (Jim Dixon)
Date: Fri, 19 Aug 94 05:04:53 PDT
To: jamesd@netcom.com
Subject: Re: Are "they" really the enemy?
Message-ID: <6680@aiki.demon.co.uk>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


In message <199408182230.PAA15298@netcom7.netcom.com> "James A. Donald" writes:
> Jim Dixon writes
> > You won't tear down the government without replacing it. 
> 
> We can certainly drastically weaken and seriously impair
> and obstruct government without replacing it.

Can you prove this?  Or at least show some historical example?
In France, the monarchy was replaced by a republic which quickly
descended into the Reign of Terror.  There was no gap.	Orderly rule
drifted into terror, which was succeeded by Napoleon's iron rule.

Napoleon took over in part because people wanted order.

In the American South after the Civil War, the Union smashed local
government and replaced it with something acceptable to them.  This
did not have the consent of the white population.  The Ku Klux Klan
developed as a way for the whites to enforce their rules.

The Ku Klux Klan was in its way an instrument of democracy.

In Russia, the monarchy was replaced by a republic which was destroyed
by the Bolsheviks.  There was widespread civil war.  But there whenever
there was a governmental vacuum, people filled it.  Russia was full of
bands of armed men.  People needed governments to protect them from
the marauders.

Stalin was an expression of the people's will.

There have been cases where government was torn down and replaced
by something else which was not called the government.	The Ku Klux
Klan was not part of the formal government of the South.  But it
functioned as part of the apparatus of government.

The US government is a large and powerful organization.  Let us say
that somehow you contrive to successfully weaken, impair, and
obstruct it.  How will you do this?  Not by yourself.  One person
cannot defeat millions.  You need a group of some size, at the very
least of thousands.  This group must have a set of common goals and
some sort of administrative structure to effect those goals...

I could continue, but you must understand what I am going to say:
governments can only be defeated by organizations with the
attributes of governments.

The alternative is to take over the government to some degree.
But then in time you will find that there are people out there who
regard you as part of the government, and set out to drastically
weaken, seriously impair, and obstruct your government.
--
Jim Dixon