Dichroic Reflections

don't say it can't be done

In the comments of Katallen's powerful post on Ratzinger and why he did have a choice, I've been having a discussion with Trinker on the current status of the US and its comparison to pre- or early-Nazi Germany. My point is that I think that while there is danger and we do have to be wary and to keep speaking out, it would be much more difficult to bring that type of repression to the US than it was to Weimar Germany because of our existing diversity, our Constitutional protections, and all of our avenues to speak out, especially now on the Internet.

I was searching for something else when I came across an interview with Pete Seeger. In it, he said better than I could why speaking out one on one and in web journals and in all of the other small spots where we can be heard is important, and why it does matter, and why there is still hope:

"When the Vietnam War ended and there were no more huge demonstrations in Washington," Seeger said, "a lot of people thought, ‘Well, I guess there are no big things happening now.' I believe the big thing now is many small things. The fact that many small things are going on is the big story. I think that there are probably not hundreds of thousands but maybe millions of people like me who are working for peace and work- ing to get out the vote—but doing it in a lot of small ways, instead of one big way, and I'm convinced that that's the best way to do it.

"This is a very basic philosophical point that I'm trying to make. When you're facing an opponent over a broad front, you don't aim for the opponent's strong points, important though they may be. Pick a little outpost that you can capture and win. And then you find another place that you can capture and win it, and then you move slowly toward the big places. Look at Martin Luther King. People wondered, ‘Why is he worrying about sitting at the back of the bus or having a seat at lunch counters? Why doesn't he go after schools, housing, voting, jobs?' He took on sitting on a bus, but he won it!

Or as Pete says elsewhere:
Don't say it can't be done,
The battle's just begun,
Take it from Dr. King,
You've got to learn to sing
So drop the gun!