Two Theories of Change and Liberal Friends

May 25, 2010

Over in the NYTimes colum­nist David Brooks talks about Two The­o­ries of Change. He’s talk­ing about mod­ern Amer­i­can pol­i­tics but it seems rel­e­vant to Friends. Here’s his sum­ma­ry of a new paper by Yuval Levin of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chicago:

paineburke

[Thomas] Paine believed that soci­eties exist in an “eter­nal now.” That some­thing has exist­ed for ages tells us noth­ing about its val­ue. The past is dead and the liv­ing should use their pow­ers of analy­sis to sweep away exist­ing arrange­ments when nec­es­sary, and begin the world anew. He even sug­gest­ed that laws should expire after 30 years so each new gen­er­a­tion could begin again

[Edmund] Burke, a par­tic­i­pant in the British Enlight­en­ment, had a dif­fer­ent vision of change. He believed that each gen­er­a­tion is a small part of a long chain of his­to­ry. We serve as trustees for the wis­dom of the ages and are oblig­ed to pass it down, a lit­tle improved, to our descen­dents. That wis­dom fills the gaps in our own rea­son, as age-old insti­tu­tions implic­it­ly con­tain more wis­dom than any indi­vid­ual could have.

For Brooks, the Paine fol­l­low­ers are Tea Par­ty activists who think it’s fine to “sweep away 100 years of his­to­ry and return gov­ern­ment to its prein­dus­tri­al role.” 

But for Friends, espe­cial­ly Lib­er­al Friends, this touch­es on the nature of “Con­tin­u­al Rev­e­la­tion” that has been at the cen­ter of much of our delib­er­a­tions for about a hun­dred years now. Are we in an “eter­nal now,” ready to rein­vent lib­er­al Quak­erism every thir­ty years and only will­ing to read old Friends to pull quotes out of con­text? Or are we tin­ker­ers of tra­di­tion, trustees keep­ing the parts oiled for the next generation? 
I can think of par­tic­u­lar Friends who fol­low Paine’s con­tin­u­al rev­o­lu­tion mod­el and oth­ers who fol­low Burke’s long chain mod­el. Some­how both feel lim­it­ed. To sub­scribe strong­ly to either is a kind of fun­da­men­tal­ism. We are in an eter­nal now (Christ has come to teach the peo­ple him­self) but we have 350 of expe­ri­ences and tech­niques that have taught us how to be ready to act in that now. Insist­ing on both seems important.

Horses on a Trot?

December 8, 2003

Almost a month ago I ques­tion a “newly-launched cam­paign of phone tax resistance”:http://www.hanguponwar.org in a post called “Beat­ing Dead Horses”:www.nonviolence.org/articles/000194.php.
Robert Ran­dall, a dear friend who I haven’t seen in far too long, wrote in last night explain­ing how the new cam­paign came about and some of its goals.
bq. Hi, Martin.
   I’m all for com­ing up with new tac­tics, and I think a lot of peo­ple have
been doing just that. This does­n’t mean, though, that we have to leave old
tac­tics behind if they can serve us. Nor should we assume that old tactics
are not new tac­tics for some.
   Inter­est­ing­ly, at its Nov. 2002 meet­ing, the Nation­al War Tax Resistance
Coor­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee did in fact decide to shelve a “Hang Up On the SOA”
fly­er because the ease of tele­phone tax resis­tance was no longer there: with
the pletho­ra of new phone com­pa­nies and the unwill­ing­ness of the FCC to
apply its old rul­ings on the AT&T tar­iff to oth­er com­pa­nies, we felt that it
would be inac­cu­rate to pro­mote phone tax refusal as an easy, low-risk form
of remov­ing sup­port for war.
   Now, though, we have the pos­si­bil­i­ty, through a large phone tax
redi­rec­tion cam­paign and the Inter­net, to learn and gath­er togeth­er the
how-to-do-it infor­ma­tion on all these dif­fer­ent phone ser­vices. It may take
time, but it is far from impos­si­ble. In the process, a lot of edu­cat­ing can
be done, both of the pub­lic and of phone com­pa­ny employ­ees. ease of doing
it can rise and risk can be lowered.
   What I like about the Hang Up On War cam­paign (www​.hangupon​war​.org) is
that it did not orig­i­nate with a war tax orga­ni­za­tion. It comes from the
iraq peace Pledge, made up of a num­ber of peace groups, old and new. NWTRCC is avail­able to ser­vice the cam­paign, but the fact that “main­line” peace
groups are pro­mot­ing wtr is some­thing which, as you are aware, those of us
who are long-time war tax con­vert­ers have long desired. While sup­port for
this cam­paign was not unan­i­mous at our recent NWTRCC meet­ing in Chica­go, I,
for one, felt it a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to get peo­ple start­ed toward less
sym­bol­ic, real war tax redirection.
   True, the fed­er­al excise tax on phone ser­vice is no more directly
linked to war than the fed­er­al income tax, but it is also no less. One
strat­e­gy which I favor is to pro­vide as many avenues of ingress to resisting
war as pos­si­ble. This is one. We can cer­tain­ly come up with oth­ers, and
with bet­ter ones, but I see no ben­e­fit in dis­parag­ing what some are doing
for peace. For many peo­ple, phone tax resis­tance is a new tac­tic and a big
step. Let’s applaud what I see as a step for­ward, into any kind of
resis­tance, for groups which have often stopped short of such things, and
work with them to keep mov­ing ever for­ward. I trust you will be suggesting
to where that might be.
 peace and hope,
 Robert Randall