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Hey I thought they were cool demonstrations, I tend to like civil disobedience. But even at the time I also said I wasn't sure if they were going to be productive, and it turns out that they weren't.
Thats what a lot of "liberals" said about anti-apartheid demsontrations. But they were wrong then and you are now. The purpose of a demonstration is to DEMONSTRATE your position to others, not to tug your forelock and beg their consent.
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elling and spitting into peoples faces is pretty extreme, does that mean you would recommend that activity to someone who wants to get people on their side?
Yes - as long as you yell and spit at their enemies. In doing so you demonstrate solidarity and corporate responsibility. Don't you sympathise with people who are willing to fight alongside you?
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In that environment, maybe it wasn't such a good time to say "no way am I going to accept anything less than full use of the word marriage", break the law, and throw it in the faces of everyone. Like I said, cool, but smart? Productive?
Much better than the alternative, which is to be ghettoised, and worse, to endorse that gghettoisation actively or passively. The fact that the bigots came out fighting should not be allowed to intimidate anyone into backing off; it is craven to say "I have principles, unless and until they are opposed".
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It gave the conservatives the ammo they needed to create a rainbow scare, and make it seem like gays were about to turn the nation upside down.
"I'm not homophobic, but many other people are." Homophobia by proxy, just like racism by proxy.
Holmes, why don't you self-identify as a conservative? Every one of your arguments appears to be conservative, containing a reflexive hostility to anyone who wants to change anything or who takes steops top actually do so. It seems to me that your vision of the good society is everyone knowing their place.
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Radicalism is also a recipe for failure. It all depends on how careful the cook is.
Achievements by radicals: the french and american revolutions, the rise of democracy, protestantism, the fall of slavery, female emancipation, the magna carta, the enlightenment, many others.
Triumphs of moderates: erm, got any? Kyoto springs to mind - it is the archetypal failure of the moderate strategy.
"Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, can never bring about a reform." Susan B Anthony
"As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever." Clarence Darrow
"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made." Oscar Wilde
"The unreasonable man is the one who expects the world to adapt to his needs, the reasonable man is the one who adapts himself to suit the world. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man."
George Bernard Shaw
™ Version 4.2