My informant at the Georgia state capitol points out Senate Resolution 786, which “[encourages] the display of the Ten Commandments and the acknowledgment of God by local governments and the State of Georgia; and for other purposes.” This cites Georgia Code 45-13-41, which legally places the Ten Commandments in a list of documents that “contributed to the history of the State of Georgia.”

Now, I was a high school junior when the whole Ten Commandments-in-schools mess started. Personally, I think the whole thing is a tremendous waste of resources on both sides. Christians who want to spread the morals embodied by the Ten Commandments have better ways of doing this than overpriced monuments that then go into legal battles and take up even more time and money. I think the ACLU has more important fights to pick (copyright extension, legal protection of computer code as speech, et al). However, it looks like there is no stopping it now.

Why are religious documents treated differently than nonreligious ones? For that matter, what makes a document religious? If one does not believe in the Judeo-Christian God, then one does not believe that the Bible is anything special as a book. It loses its significance as a religious work, and becomes a literary one. What makes quoting Book 2, Chapter 20, lines 2-17 of The Bible, authors anonymous, different from quoting Act 2, Scene 2, lines 2-25 of Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare? The religious significance of the passage exists entirely in the minds of those who believe the Bible to be the Word of God. If you do not so believe, then the Bible just becomes The Bible. Why should it be treated differently from Shakespeare?

One of the interesting tricks I see in SR 786 is that a statement of fact is used in conjunction with an action that would be permissible in order to allow an (admittedly unusual) Ten Commandments display to be made in a public place. The statement of fact is simply a restatement of the text of the Commandments (in that old-school KJV language) as part of the resolution. Now, the resolution encourages postings of the Ten Commandments, as well as of all or part of its own text, by local officials. Therefore, by posting the Ten Commandments you are merely posting part of a Resolution of the Senate of the State of Georgia. Since when was there anything wrong with that?

Underhanded? Yep. I don’t believe that the Ten Commandments deserves to be placed in school halls, or on big rocks outside courthouses, on the grounds that it is a waste of time and money. In other words, not illegal, just a bad idea. I do believe that it can and should be taught in public schools as part of civics classes and world history, where codified laws (both religious and secular) are an important part of the curriculum. To me, the intriguing part of the issue is what defines religious significance, and how this can change over time. I covered this to some extent in my post about Americism. What if the Christian religion were debunked absolutely tomorrow to the extent that no believers remained? Since the Ten Commandments arguably still has had influence on Georgia law (and Georgia law itself states that fact), could the Commandments then be posted without opposition?

I just realized something. I started blogging because I was going to stop sending links to people. I was going to blog the links instead. This provided me with instant archiving, and the ability to just post the links and let all my friends access them when they desired. AIM crashes? No problem! Just look up the links on the blog.

Today, I have sent Josh four links, mostly culled from other blogs (directly or indirectly). None of them have been posted here. On the other hand, in the month of February, I have written about hating one of my profs, about nonviolent conflict, and about books I’m reading.

I was reading Volokh today and saw the link to Blogopoly. Following it, I proceeded to open the links to Broadway (USS Clueless) and Park Place (Dean’s World), as well as to Luxury Tax, which was the TTLB Blog Ecosystem.

I’ll start in the middle. Dean’s World led me to campaign commercials at IMAO. I summarily sent this last link to Josh. Nothing else came of this.

More relevant to my real purpose here was the top posting on USS Clueless, about blogger burnout. He’s taking a hiatus, but the first part of the entry deals with the two different types of bloggers, which he calls editors and writers. (He goes into a lot more detail here, look toward the middle.) The editors mostly deal in links with small amounts of description, with the canonical example being InstaPundit. Writers, on the other hand, tend to put miniature essays in their blogs. It’s a lot harder in many ways to be a writer; writers stick their reputations out on every post and have to produce a greater amount of original content. Okay, so far, so good.

Okay, so it seems the same day that Clueless takes a break, TTLB decides to return to his (her? anonymity can be annoying) core and focus on blogging. Interesting.

So. I intended to go into the blogging hobby as a linker–I intended to be posting interesting things that I come across, with a small amount of comment. However, that didn’t work for very long. I don’t have the time to produce the sort of editing output that’s worthwhile, and what I did grab was typically only two degrees of separation, at the most, from The Volokh Conspiracy. There is little point in that. So I’ve changed. Over the past year, my posts have gotten longer. I’ve put more thought into them (generally speaking). Now, I write. Not about any one subject, but about all sorts of different things, usually inspired by something here at Tech or just reporting on the books I’m reading.

I know I only have a couple of readers. I don’t know who you are (except for Josh, and I could venture a few other guesses), but thanks for reading. Hopefully, with time I’ll be more consistently interesting. For me, writing is always an experiment, since it is not my strongest ability. That’s why I did NaNoWriMo, that’s why I started writing at e2, and that’s why I continue this blog, even if it’s not why I started it. It turns out that writing is more important to me than even I thought. The only way to get better, of course, is to practice.

I want to be able to skip class too, and send my assistant instead. Dr. Hanegud, if you’re reading this, you are doing an excellent job of looking like you do not at all care about your dynamics class. I’m not sure whether that’s true or not, but at least make it look like you are interested in teaching us. If you are going to miss class because of a conference or something, let us know in advance. If you have a sick kid, apologize for missing the class, because we’ll understand. We’ll think that you think that we’re important enough to be thought of. Your apparent apathy is reflected in the class’ performance.

Meanwhile, you could at least try to prep the TA’s. Give them the right problems, and note that any problems that you give them to work that you didn’t assign were, in fact, not assigned. This just streamlines the class. Personally, though, I’d rather you show up to class. I may not like you, but you do cover new material. I’m concerned that we’re going to rush through the end of the class, leaving all of us completely clueless by the end. Here’s to hoping that doesn’t happen.

The Georgia Tech Symposium on Nonviolent Conflict was held on January 27, 2004, and featured Jack DuVall, President of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, as well as Professor Hugh Gusterson of Public Policy and Professor Sylvia Maier of International Affairs. There was also a moderator, but I didn’t catch his name. His contributions were minor in any case.

The symposium kicked off with a screening of the one-hour film, Bringing Down a Dictator, about the resistance effort that eventually led to the removal of Slobodan Milosevic from power in Serbia. Afterward, the participants each gave a short presentation about nonviolent conflict (which turned out to be mostly a nonviolence-hugging agree-fest, with one exception) followed by a question and answer session.

Mr. DuVall, as the President of the ICNC, was very adamant about the use of nonviolent conflict. Generally, I found myself persuaded, but his assertion that any oppressive regime is in some way susceptible to nonviolent methods of conflict seems fishy to me. Looking, for example, at Soviet Russia under Stalin, it is nearly impossible for nonviolent resistance to get off the ground. One of the keys to nonviolent conflicts, it seems, is good organization of the movement. This doesn’t mean structure as a matter of necessity, and in fact, structure is best avoided (to improve the resilience of the organization to attack) but in order to be effective, the group must be able to meet together. The Serbian resistance groups were aided by what freedom they had to assemble, something that a quickly quashed early East German resistance never would have been able to start.

As an extreme case, we can look at the oppressive regime presented by George Orwell in 1984. Though purely hypothetical, it does expose as incorrect this idea that nonviolent resistance can always be effective. The sheer impossibility of organizing such a resistance in the 1984 world, Emmanuel Goldstein notwithstanding, shows that it is possible to quench all resistance given the right attitude and tools.

When the question and answer session came along, the very first question, which I thought a perceptive one, was “What role does a preexisting democratic structure play in the success of nonviolent conflict, even a heavily broken one?” I was worried by the fact that Mr. DuVall’s response failed entirely to answer the question. It seems that many of the successful nonviolent conflicts of the past century, including the Indian independence movement, the American civil rights movement, the South African anti-apartheid movement, and the Serbian resistance all depended heavily on some form of free or democratic structure to achieve their goals, especially regarding the freedom of assembly (or at least a governmental apathy towards assembly). I am rather curious about how important it is for nonviolent resistance groups to leverage existing freedoms to gain more. Is such a foothold needed? If so, what freedoms (or apathies) are prerequisite to effective nonviolent conflict?

I was left with a few questions I didn’t have the opportunity to ask, though I hope to have them answered at least in part if I ever get Mr. DuVall’s book (we were supposed to be comped a copy, but I haven’t heard from the ICNC since I sent the email two weeks ago). First, is there a dependence on the oppressive leadership being rational? Saddam Hussein is often referred to as irrational, and it seems likely that he had little to lose by violently reacting to a nonviolent conflict situation. Dr. Maier indicated that a leader with nothing to lose such as Stalin or Kim Chong-Il might in fact be immune to nonviolent attacks, though I do not know if the other panelists shared her opinion.

Second, hypothetically speaking, is it possible to have a nonviolent response to nonviolent conflict? What would happen if a government were to somehow respond to the conflict in a nonviolent manner? I’ve tried to think about this one, but I can’t wrap my brain around a possible nonviolent governmental response to a nonviolent conflict. Obviously the second part of the question is moot until the first is answered in the affirmative.

Third is a follow up to the last question asked of the participants. The final question asked what long-term benefits there were from using nonviolent conflict rather than violent conflict. The response was that violent revolution tended to lead to the replacement of one repressive regime by another. For example, the Russian, French, and Cuban revolutions all led to authoritarian systems, while the nonviolent revolutions in Poland, the Czech Republic, East Germany, and India all brought about democratic forms of government. Prof. Gusterson brought up that the psychology of violence means that it tends to “stick,” that is, once the goal of a violent resistance is achieved the resistance still tends to want to be violent, and when the resistance becomes the new government it in turn tends to be more authoritarian and violent. While these cases provide good evidence, I came up with one good counterexample: the American Revolutionary War. Was the American Revolution a fluke where violent conflict led to a democratic government? Or was it just a careful balance of violent and nonviolent forms of conflict (think Boston Tea Party, among others) such that the net result was that violence did not dominate the conflict? Why did the United States turn out so well when our genesis was in fact violent?

The film and subsequent discussion were enlightening, and very provocative. I am very much looking forward to reading Mr. DuVall’s book, A Force More Powerful, as soon as I get my hands on a copy. And clear out the rest of my reading list.

Oh yeah. ObEvangelism:

Funny name. Serious browser. Download and enjoy.

Didn’t shower yet. Hall Council. [adult swim] now. Tomorrow morning. Promise.

The book first, because it’s easier. Then I’ll shower and return with the other bit.

Monstrous Regiment went well. The synopsis is that a girl in the horribly backwards Discworld country of Borogravia, which incidentally has this bad tendency to declare war on its neighbors, joins the army to find her brother. Borogravia is a monarchist-theocracy, whose leader may very well be dead and whose god, Nuggan, regularly issues edicts (“Abominations”) about what is and is not allowed. Abominations have included, at various times, the color blue and babies, just to give you some idea.

In any case, Pratchett seems to be trying to attack a lot of subjects in about 350 measly pages. Topics include gender discrimination, the nature and propriety of war, the differences between men and women, and the power that but a few people can wield under the right circumstances. What occurs, of course, is that none of these subjects is discussed in much depth as a matter of necessity. The book makes up for this by having a good though at times quite predictable story, and by being funny. Often very funny. One of the things I liked about this book is that Pratchett isn’t very wrapped up in Discworld himself. The characters all speak in a British accent and drink beer. Clich?s are either exploited for humorous gain or thrown entirely out the window, also for humorous gain (my favorite joke is a footnote about an accidental crossbow shot that, rather than hit a bird, drifts a little and misses a squirrel thirty feet away).

Short review then, is that this book is worth reading for the humor and story, if not for the insightful social analysis. On the insightful social analysis front, it has little new to say, but it does bring to the fore a number of topical situations in an extremely abstract way. So abstract, in fact, that it is very difficult to apply what he’s written to anything that happens to be going on. Maybe that’s what Pratchett was going for, I couldn’t say. So wait for it in paperback, or borrow it from someone. Quick read and fun.

It’s now been nearly two weeks since the symposium. I’ve managed to not write about it yet, which is quite an accomplishment. The correct course of action at this point is to vow, at this point, to review my notes and set my thoughts down immediately following my workout at 2000.

While I’m here: It’s time for a reading list update!

1. (Current book) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
2. The Flyers, Noah Adams
3. Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need
4. Cannonball! World’s Greatest Outlaw Road Race, Brock Yates
5. To Engineer is Human, Henry Petroski
6. Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway
7. Life of Pi, Yann Martel

Finished Monstrous Regiment a few days ago. I should talk about that too when I get back.

Maybe not. Tests tomorrow and Friday. Meetings practically every night. Ergh.