I liked Moglen's point that John Brown and MLK both used violence, but in different ways. Martin King put people in situations where the moral depravity of the state could be graphically expressed through violence against them in the form of dogs, fire hoses, and police brutality. The advance made by King over the tactics of Brown was not the avoidance of violence, but the turning of violence inside out as a tool to arouse moral fervor, exposing the true nature of the evil hidden from the eyes of many in society, rather than using it as a vent or escape hatch through which moral rage burned itself out. For violence to be effective, it must go through to the end, and solve the problem with finality, as the Civil War did; Brown's violence was too weak.

Gandhi used a process similar to King's, but in his case it was violence against the self, both against his own body through starvation, and against the bodies of his countrymen through long marches. But, again, the resulting moral suasion was powerful and effective. I think we should remember, though, that the normal American response to injustice is not nonviolence, historically, but either inaction or war. We are still trigger-happy, if our own interests are at stake, as the wars in the Middle East illustrate, but much less trigger-happy when it's the interests of others that are on the line. Any of the many brutal, genocidal third world dictatorships that we ignore while taking aim at Iraq and other such targets could serve to illustrate. I think, though, in general, violence is not something that most people in law school are able to confront with honesty, either because it is too foreign or too intense. But, this is exactly why it's so powerful if turned inside-out and used for good.

-- SamWells - 09 Mar 2010

After reading up a little on Gandhi, I now realize that he also encouraged his followers to take actions that led to violence. In India during WWII as a part of the Quit India movement, which was dedicated to resistance against the British government and its final overthrow, thousands of members of his political party were killed, even as the movement was ultimately successful in convincing the British to turn over power to India. Violence seems to be pervasive in struggles for justice.

-- SamWells - 10 Mar 2010