Is there an anti-war movement in Illinois?

I've been working with a group in Chicago to use the film Rethink Afghanistan to encourage a civic conversation about U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, as well as in Iraq and other parts of the Mideast and South Asia. "Rethink Afghanistan" is a very powerful, fact-based, 60-minute documentary that covers key issues in the Afghanistan conflict. The entire film can be watched on the Rethink website. A large community follows Rethink Afghanistan on Facebook.

The bad news is ... what with holidays, work schedules, school schedules, family schedules, the economic meltdown, etc. etc. etc. ... it's very hard to make regular progress in advancing the conversation.

The good news is ... the conversation is advancing ... and not just in Chicago! Over the past several weeks, I've reached out to people throughout the state to learn what is going on in local communities. Below is a sampling of what I found.

The Peoria Area Peace Network has weekly (noon - 1 pm) protests agaist the wars, and often includes speakers on human rights issues. The group also participates in national programs, e.g. the Chicago event on October 16.

Alton has a group that has screened "Rethink Afghanistan."

Carbondale also has a group that has screened "Rethink Afghanistan" ... in a congressional district that includes a lot of Scott Air Force base workers ...

Evanston has a very active anti-war group called Neighbors for Peace. Also - there are quite a few other groups throughout the North Shore.

In Chicago . . .

. . . there was a large anti-war march on October 16;

. . . Chicago-Area Veterans for Peace has an active slate of activities;

. . . Loyola, UIC, and Columbia College and have active chapters of Campus Anti-war Network.

. . . the Chicago Peacebuilding Program at the American Friends Service Committee has regular activities;

And, of course, in our own Rethink Afghanistan - Chicago group, we've had a series of activities, including:

• summer screening of "Rethink Afghanistan"


• participation in the October 16 Chicago march


• monthly meetings at The Bourgeois Pig, 738 W Fullerton

In other parts of Illinois, groups have been set up to arrange screenings of "Rethink Afghanistan," as well.

I'm sure the conversation in Illinois will continue to grow!

Do you have additional information on the anti-war movement in Illinois? Please add your information as a comment below!

Munich and the Ring Road to Hell

This content has been moved to: "Steven Spielberg's "Munich" and My Munich ... and the Ring Road to Hell" at Scarry Thoughts.

The Opposite of Violence Is . . . ?

This content has been moved to: "Is the Opposite of Violence Non-Violence? Or Is It Compassion?" at Scarry Thoughts.

America's Founders: "Might Makes Right? Or Just Trouble?"

I've gone back to read the U.S. Constitution recently, and it's left me convinced that our founders had a very clear vision of a nation that avoided throwing it's weight around.

Years ago, I read Bernard Bailyn's book about the ideological origins of the American revolution. His basic idea was that you had to understand some of the abuses that our founders had observed in order to know how passionately they felt about avoiding them in the future. One of those abuses was indefinite detention, which I have delved into extensively elsewhere. Of equal concern to the Founders was the danger posed by standing armies. In the view of the founders, setting up a standing army was just asking for trouble.

William F. Marina laid this out very clearly in an article 35 years ago: "Militia, Standing Armies, and the Second Amendment." As Marina summed it up, "An armed citizenry...was both a check on domestic tyranny and the most desirable form of national defense. It was for the security of a free state from these perils that the Founders sought the protection of a well-regulated militia."

To echo Marina, I find several elements of the U.S. Constitution very explicit on this point. First, of course, there is the Second Amendment protection on the militia institution. The full context for this is provided in a series of grants of Congressional authority in Article 1, Section 8: first, the very brief statement of Congressional authority to raise an army (i.e. standing body of soldiers) for a limited period of 2 years, followed immediately and contrasted with the Congressional authority to provide a navy (i.e. capital equipment; ships), which, once provided, will be around indefinitely .... followed in Section 8 by the substantially more elaborate set of rules for calling forth the militia -- which clearly was intended as the main instrument of national defense.

I must confess that, having grown up at the height of the Vietnam War -- in which American projection of military power was in the news every day -- in the old New Jersey town of Chatham, with its annual 4th of July Fife & Drum Corps musters, I assumed for a long time that the military-industrial complex was a long-standing American tradition, and that the concept of the militia was obsolete.

My mind was opened when I read John McPhee's book about Switzerland, La Place de la Concorde Suisse, which provides a powerful picture of how a modern militia permeates the life of that nation. Switzerland doesn't sally forth looking for fights, but those mountains are bristling with weapons and everyone's a soldier.

With the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, I became aware that a lot of units going overseas are actually parts of the National Guard. This led me to do a little research, and I learned that the militias of the various states, the National Guard, and the U.S. Army are related to each other according to a set of laws (notably the National Defense Act of 1916) that take very seriously the primacy of the militia laid out in the U.S. Constitution. (For chapter and verse on this, see Barry M. Stentiford, The American Home Guard: The State Militia in the Twentieth Century.)

The more I dig into the U.S. Constitution, the more I'm convinced that the purpose the United States originally aspired to was precisely this unprecedented purpose: to demonstrate the truth of the proposition that might doesn't make right, and that governance can be achieved by other means.

People of good will can differ about just how far we, as a nation, have strayed from that purpose . . . and, to the degree that we have, the reasons why are complicated and need to be discussed thoroughly. But as a matter of first principal, isn't it important to get honest with ourselves about the basic question of what the Founders intended? And to ask ourselves whether that intent might be worth honoring?

Post #1: What if . . . ?

Thinking about the challenges and opportunities the United States faces . . . in the grand scheme of things . . . I started to think that we are writhing in the face of a lot of specific challenges ( . . . mortgage crisis . . . China on the rise . . . conflict with the Islamic world . . . .) but the more important question is: what is our larger purpose? To put it more starkly: what is a national purpose that is worthy of us as a nation?

I'm particularly intrigued by the phenomenon of other countries "catching up" to us -- particularly after they have gone through difficult periods of trying to "learn from" the United States and the West. (I've personally spent a lot of time studying China and Japan.) Often this learning is heavily slanted in the direction of how to imitate our military might. And, unsurprisingly, those other countries have found a way to learn those lessons well.

The United States found itself in a peculiar situation in the second half of the twentieth century. We had saved the world during WW II through an assertion of superior might. We came out of that conflict with a head of steam that made it hard to deny the proposition that, when the chips are down, the big guns are a good thing.

But does that circumstance adequate define our purpose in the future?

What would we define as our purpose, if we knew that we could choose the purpose that truly had value, and that we could prevail? Would we identify a purpose that transcended such things as home ownership, a favorable balance of trade, and a cessation of hostilities with our ideological foes?

What if the purpose the United States aspired to was something of historical proportions? A purpose that hadn't been tried before? But one that would be worthy of us precisely because of the obstacles our own size and strength puts in our way?

What if our purpose as a nation was to demonstrate the truth of the proposition that might doesn't make right, and that governance can be achieved principally on the basis of compassion?