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Offensive and Defensive Weapons – Churchill’s Thoughts…

Posted on July 10, 2016 by TheMorningTomatoReport

I was reading.  It happens….

Actually, I was reading Winston Churchill’s “The Coming Storm.”  My thought on reading the following was that it stands repeating.

 

“The Foreign Secretary told us that it was difficult to divide weapons into offensive and defensive categories.  It certainly is, because almost every conceivable weapon may be used in defence or offence; either by an aggressor or by the innocent victim of his assault.  To make it more difficult for the invader, heavy guns, tanks, and poison gas are to be relegated to the evil category of offensive weapons.  The invasion of France by Germany in 1914 reached its climax without the employment of any of these weapons.  The heavy gun is to be described as “an offensive weapon.”  It is all right in a fortress; there it is virtuous and pacific in its character; but bring it out into the field – and, of course, if it were needed, it would be brought out into the field – and it immediately becomes naughty, peccant, militaristic, and has to be placed under the ban of civilisation.  Take the tank.  The Germans, having invade France, entrenched themselves; and in a couple of years they shot down 1,500,000 French and British soldiers who were trying to free the soil of France.  The tank was invented to overcome the fire of the machine-guns with which the Germans were maintaining themselves in France, and it saved a lot of lives in clearing the soil of the invader.  Now, apparently, the machine-gun, which was the German weapon for holding on to thirteen provinces of France, is to be the virtuous, defensive machine-gun, and the tank, which was the means by which these Allied lives were saved, is to be placed under the censure and obloquy of all just and righteous men…

A truer classification might be drawn in banning weapons which tend to be indiscriminate in their action and whose use entails death and wounds, not merely on the combatants in the fighting zones, but on the civil population, men, women, and children, far removed from those areas.  There, indeed, it seems to me would be a direction in which the united nations assembled at Geneva might advance with hope…”

Winston Churchill.  The Gathering Storm.  1948.  Houghton Mifflin Company.

 

Weapons do not harm people. People harm people.  People with weapons can usually cause more harm than people without weapons.  I believe that a good portion of Britain’s Bobbys are still armed only with a hickory nightstick…

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Dear Mr. Deity,

Posted on January 17, 2015 by TheMorningTomatoReport

Thank you for sending us your newest YouTube video.  You have taken great care to explain why it is wrong to punch someone in the nose for not liking someone’s mom and I appreciate this!

 

A link to Mr. Deity

The Way of the Mister  —  These words are offensive!  This video is offensive!  It is a must watch!  I am not offended by this video, I am offended by the fact that the Catholic Church will probably get away with yet another offensive speech by yet another offensive leader, without understanding what it is they have done, are doing, and will likely continue to do.

I have a hard copy of the transcript (available beneath the YouTube video), just in case it disappears!

A link to the article in The Guardian where the Pope is quoted.

 

There is no excuse.

 

~~~~~

Now, a few bits from articles on a few of the points made by Mr. Deity (aka Brian Keith Dalton).  It is important because it is all connected!

Please note that I have not read any of these articles (yet).  I have taken a quick peek and I have saved and/or printed them for later perusal and bibliography mining!

 

~~~~~

Satire:

Botha, E.  2014.  A means to an end:  Using political satire to go viral.  Public Relations Review, Volume 40, Number 1.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2013.11.023

Joan Ozark Holmer.  1981.  Religious Satire in Herrick’s “The Fairie Temple: or, Oberons Chappell.“  Renaissance and Reformation: Renaissance et Réforme, Volume 17, No. 1, pages 40-56.

Drew Kaup.  2014.  Unaffiliation:  Where the New Atheists Went Wrong, and How South Park Paved the Way for the ‘Rise of the Nones’.  Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Emory College of Arts and Sciences of Emory University, Department of Religion.

Heather L. LaMarre, Kristen D. Landreville and Michael A. Beam.  2009.  The Irony of Satire:  Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report.  International Journal of Press/Politics, Volume 14, Number 2, April 2009, pages 212-231.

Richard Strier.  2011.  The Unrepentant Renaissance:  from Petrarch to Shakespeare to Milton.  University of Chicago Press.  (Available in libraries, bookstores and online.)

George W. Whiting.  1930.  Political Satire in London Stage Plays, 1680-83.  Modern Philology, Volume 28, No. 1 (August, 1930), pages 29-43.

 

Moral Credibility:

Dan M. Kahan.  1997.  Between Economics and Sociology:  The New Path of Deterrence.  Michigan Law Review, Volume 95, No. 8 (August 1997), pages 2477-2497.

Paul H. Robinson.  1994.  Moral Credibility and Crime.  The Atlantic Monthly. 8/18/1994.  Draft only.

Paul H. Robinson and Sarah Robinson.  2014.  Punishment:  Drop City and the Utopian Communes, Chapter 3 in Living Beyond the Law:  Lessons from Pirates, Prisoners, Lepers, and Survivors.  Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, and Plymouth, UK:  Rowman & Littlefield.  Pages 49-62.

 

The Catholic Pope and Violence:

Patrick McKinley Brennan.  2013.  Subsidiarity in the Tradition of Catholic Social Doctrine, Chapter in Subsidiarity in Comparative Perspective.  Michelle Evans and Augusto Zimmermann (eds.).  Springer.  Villanova University School of Law, School of Law Working Paper Series, 2012, Paper 173.

Jeffrey S. Burwell.  2014.  Pope Francis and Bill 18:  How his vision of non-judgment could temper the ways that administrators of Catholic schools in Manitoba integrate the Safe and Inclusive Schools amendment.  University of Manitoba, St. Paul’s College.

Christian Fiala and Joyce H. Arthur.  2014.  “Dishonourable disobedience” – Why refusal to treat in reproductive healthcare is not conscientious objection.  Women – Psychosomatic Gynaecology and Obstetrics, Volume 1, December 2014, pages 12-23.

Warwick Middleton, Pam Stavropoulos, Martin J. Dorahy, Christa Kruger, Roberto Lewis-Fernandez, Alfonso Martinez-Taboas, Vedat Sar and Bethany Brand.  2014.  The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.  Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Volume 48, Number 17, pages 17-21.  DOI: 10.1177/0004867413514639

Kurt Nelson.  2014.  Review of Faith, Resistance, and the Future:  Daniel Berrigan’s Challenge to Catholic Social Thought.  James L. Marsh and Anna J. Brown (Eds.).  New York:  Fordham University Press, 2012.  (Available in libraries, bookstores and online.) Journal of Catholic Education, Volume 17, Issue 2, Article 11, pages 175-178.

Gareth C. Payne, Rebecca E. Payne, and Daniel M. Farewell.  2008.  Rugby (the religion of Wales) and its influence on the Catholic Church.  Should Pope Benedict XVI be worried?  BMJ.com  doi:10.1136/bmj.a2768

 

Freedom of Speech:

Zechariah Chafee, J.  1919.  Freedom of Speech in War Time.  Harvard Law Review, Volume 32, No. 8 (Jun., 1919), pages 932-973.

Erwin Chemerinsky.  2000.  Content Neutrality as a Central Problem of Freedom of Speech:  Problems in the Supreme Court’s Application.  S. Cal. L. Rev. 74:  49.

Charles C. Helwig.  1995.  Adolescents’ and Young Adults’ Conceptions of Civil Liberties:  Freedom of Speech and Religion.  Child Development, Volume 66, Number 1,  Pages 152-166.

Lasa Sun.  2014.  The role of diversity on freedom of speech in democratic societies.  International Journal of Sustainable Human Development, Volume 2, Number 2, pages 44-51.

Gary Watt.  2014.  Judicial Allusion as Ornament:  A Response to John Curtis’s, ‘Twitter, King Lear, and the Freedom of Speech.’  Exchanges: the Warwick Research Journal, Volume 1, No. 2.  University of Warwick.

 

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I have given myself a big list to prepare for you!  A combined bibliography with links will be available soon.  If I take too long, please send a  note.  It helps to know there are people waiting for these.

 

~~~

Now, go read!  Then make up your own mind and leave a comment…

Also, please add links to more articles and books in the comments.  There is so much more!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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