. . .
J “If ICE will not stand down, the people must stand up.”
K “You can flee or you can fight. At times, there is no choice, because if you flee they will still hunt you down and gun you down without a fight.”
. . .
[See (rather why not seriously consider contemplating) the e-commentary on courage, commitment and sacrifice at “If I Get Diagnosed With Stage 4 Cancer . . . .” (December 13, 2021) and Fight Or Flight In The Face Of Fear? A Principled Reaction To Stand (November 30, 2020).]
Bumper stickers of the week:
“And as for him who lacks the courage to defend even his own soul: Let him not brag of his progressive views, boast of his status as an academician or a recognized artist, a distinguished citizen or general. Let him say to himself plainly: I am cattle, I am a coward, I seek only warmth and to eat my fill.” Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, “Live Not by Lies” written before he was arrested on February 12, 1974.
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? … The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If … if … We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation … We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918 – 1956
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. … Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. … Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” Frederick Douglass
Men and Women who wanted to be left alone. Anonymous poem:
“The most terrifying force of death, comes from the hands of Men who wanted to be left alone. They try, so very hard, to mind their own business and provide for themselves and those they love. They resist every impulse to fight back, knowing the forced and permanent change of life that will come from it. They know, that the moment they fight back, their lives as they have lived them are over. The moment the Men who wanted to be left alone are forced to fight back, it is a form of suicide. They are literally killing off who they used to be. Which is why, when forced to take up violence, these Men who wanted to be left alone, fight with unholy vengeance against those who murdered their former lives. They fight with raw hate, and a drive that cannot be fathomed by those who are merely play-acting at politics and terror. True terror will arrive at these people’s door, and they will cry, scream, and beg for mercy. . . but it will fall upon the deaf ears of the Men who just wanted to be left alone.”
“The obedient always think about themselves as virtuous, rather than cowardly.” Robert Anton Wilson
“When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.” Charles Percy Snow
There was a very cautious man
Who never laughed or played
He never risked, he never tried.
He never sang or prayed.
And when he one day passed away
His insurance was denied,
For since he never really lived,
They claimed he never really died.
e-commentary 