Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History. - book reviews

Progressive, The, Oct, 1995 by Colman McCarthy

Martin Luther King Jr. : "Nonviolent resistance avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love."

No anthology--short of one weighing a half-ton and needing a dolly to haul around--can tell the full story of nonviolence. That said, the Lynds do have their omissions.

Nothing is here on nonviolence and animals, even though a well-organized, gruesome war on cows, chickens, pigs, turkeys, ducks, and fish kills at least twelve million of these sentient beings every day for food. Then there are the other war zones of cruelty to animals: zoos, circuses, laboratories, horse and dog racing, fur farms, puppy mills, and pet shops. Many in the peace movement are oblivious to the war on nonhuman animals, as if only relations between humans can matter. Yet, unlike the current thirty to thirty-five wars raging around the world, the war on animals and fish is one in which immediate resistance can be taken: at the next meal, by refusing to eat the flesh of a being breathing and pulsed with the same life force as humans.

The Lynds would have to strengthen their text, also, with some essays on nonviolence toward fetal life. With some 1.5 million abortions annually in the United States, a large literature exists on conscientious objection to the war on pre-born life. One essay is included--"A World Where Abortion Is Unthinkable," by Shelley Douglass--but it comes in a chapter called, "A New Catholicism," suggesting that opposition to abortion is a Catholic gig and not much harm is done in indulging the Romans with a piece on abortion. But just one.

Perhaps in their next revision--as this is a revision of their 1966 work--the Lynds will broaden their range. Don't get me wrong, I think it is amazingly broad now. "Nonviolence," they write, "is the very opposite of one person imposing his (or her) truth on another. In nonviolent action, one seeks a truth larger than the truth that can be glimpsed by a single human being at a particular time." I can't imagine a more useful idea, in the classroom or out in the world.

(Colman McCarthy is a columnist for The Washington Post. He founded and directs the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington, D. C. He is a volunteer teacher at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, and is on the adjunct faculty at Georgetown University Law Center and the University of Maryland)