This conversation between Sally Kohn and Guy Benson on the possibly meritorious aspects of violence – specifically, this particular exchange:

.@guypbenson and drawing distinctions between “good” violence vs “bad” violence is morally righteous!!??? Not according to my faith…

— Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) July 22, 2014

.@sallykohn Really? So the ‘violence’ of, say, fighting off a rapist is morally indiscernable from the rapist’s actions? — Guy Benson (@guypbenson) July 22, 2014

…reminds me of, all things, a Harry Turtledove story called “The Last Article.” Basically, it’s an alternate history story where the Nazis won World War II and took over India from the British. (Spoiler warning) The Nazis then encounter Gandhi, who promptly starts up a nonviolent resistance to the occupation: the Nazis just as promptly take Gandhi out back and kills him. End of story, have a nice day. Because that’s what happens when Evil faces off Good and Good refuses to defend itself. Evil shoots Good in the head and goes on to have a delicious lunch*.

I should also note that one of the themes of this particular story – and, really, recent Middle Eastern history – is that you can only use tactics incorporating shame and appeals to better nature to people and entities willing to admit to either. Hamas clearly feels no shame or remorse about routinely violating the laws of war, not least because the group knows that there are any number of ethically deprived idiots in the West that are willing to excuse any of Hamas’s excesses. And until the aforementioned idiots either wise up or (more likely) treated the way by civilized society in the same way that we treat avowed Nazis, Hamas will continue to feel neither shame nor remorse. This is an obvious thing.  So is the fact that Israel feels no particular obligation to commit suicide simply because the antiwar Left would quite like it to.

(Image via Shutterstock.)

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Of particular interest in that story was when the Nazi Governor-General delays Gandhi’s execution briefly to thank Gandhi for advocating that the Jews of Europe embrace nonviolence to the point of massacre (something that actually happened in our own history), on the grounds that it probably helped slightly the Nazis’ goal of exterminating all the Jews that they could find.  …Gandhi was very lucky that he had monster-killers as opponents in his political struggle, and not the monsters themselves.