[Peace-discuss] defining the adversary

[C. G. Estabrook]

I read Edgar Snow as an undergraduate and was impressed with the picture of 
revolutionary China, about which one heard little good in Cold War America.

The best thing I read along with it was Benjamin Schwartz, "Chinese Communism 
and the Rise of Mao" (1951). All these years later, I'm not sure we have any 
sort of just appraisal of what the 20th c. has to teach about political change, 
liberation, and human flourishing.

The counterattack of neoliberalism has put paid, so to speak, to that.


On 7/28/10 9:39 PM, E.Wayne Johnson wrote:
> At the 2008 RNC in Minneapolis, the delegates for Ron Paul posed for a group
> picture with a replica of the Fort Moultrie Flag (a crescent moon and the word
> LIBERTY on a blue field). The flag had been signed by all the delegates and by
> Ron Paul. McCain's thugs snatched the flag and said "This is McCain country. You
> can't have that." The group did eventually get the flag back thanks to a
> attorney who observed the snatching of the flag and offered his help.
> I have been reading Edgar Snow's account of the Chinese Revolution written in
> the 1930's.
> In Hunan Changsha in 1920 a group of student demonstrators rallying for
> democracy attempted to raise a red flag and were prohibited from doing so by the
> police. They told the police that they under Article 12 of the Constitution they
> had the right to assemble, organize, and speak, but the police were not
> impressed. They said they were not there to be taught the Constitution but to
> carry out the orders of the governor.
> "From this time on I became more and more convinced that only mass political
> power, secured through mass action, could guarantee the realization of dynamic
> reforms" - Mao Zedong, 1937, quoted by Edgar Snow.
>
>
>
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