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democracy, while certainly superior to more coercive forms of government, is nonetheless still a system in which “some men exercise power over others.”

If we refuse the mythological explanation of democracy as a fundamentally new kind of social order, we can rejoice in the immensely increased possibilities which it provides of speaking to those who exercise power; the decentralization of authority, the election of legislators by a local constituency, and the constitutional and judicial controls on abuse of authority are all factors which oblige the men in power to listen to criticism with a greater degree of seriousness than in the age of absolutist monarchs.

To go to the polls is then not, as the Hutterite and the hippie on one side and the superpatriot on the other contend, a ritual affirmation of moral solidarity with the system.  It is one way, one of the weaker and vaguer ways, to speak truth to power.  We may do well to support this channel with our low-key participation, since a regime where it functions is a lesser evil (all other things being equal) than one where it does not, but our discharge of this civil duty will be more morally serious if we take it less seriously.

A related misunderstanding is the notion that it might be possible for Christians to avoid or withdraw from the political realm simply and entirely. … It is possible to avoid having an outspoken political witness or to avoid criticizing existing structures, but then that silence is also a positive political action, accepting things as they are. 

Tonto principle of Christian ethics.

it for the long haul

I don't like calling it "terrorism" because it's completely uncontrollable -- it doesn't do work that you need it to do for moral discrimination. I think you need to call it murder -- and insofar as it's murder, you want to arrest the perpetrator.

B52s turn out to be very crude police officers

My best hunch right now is that the allies of nonviolent people are political realists. Political realists have a sense that bombing a Stone Age country back to the Stone Age is exactly what bin Laden wants us to do.

How could you have had the Civil Rights movement without the patience of the black church? You've got to have people schooled in the gospel to say, "We would rather lose than fight wrongly."

I think a police force is the best institutionalization of what just war should be about. But then the arresting agent is not the same as the judging agent. In war, those two are the same.

"What would you do if your grandmother's going to be raped and you need to kill somebody?" Given the alternatives, of course I can support it! (Laugh.) Yes, that's certainly the least violent alternative we have, and I would think that's good

We want to support those who would rather die than murder. If you take Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- if you call the World Trade Center terrorism, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrorist acts. And I've had people say, "Well, that was war." And I say, "Well, you murder in war, too." The question is, would the American people have been ready to have more American soldiers die and more Japanese soldiers die on the beaches of Japan rather than to commit the murders of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? That's who we want to be: a people that would rather have more people die than to have to do a murderous act. I think that's who the military is, by the way. I think the military was profoundly embarrassed about the bombing in Yugoslavia. They're honorable people. I think there are probably some of them who are embarrassed about the bombing we're doing in Afghanistan, because they understand that part of what they're about is that they would rather die than murder. I give high credence to that.

we're not running the world. But in a world we're not running, we want to be an alternative that forces imaginative possibilities that wouldn't be there otherwise

You've got to be really embedded in a different set of practices to force a different imagination.

Pacifism, Christian nonviolence, is a commitment to vulnerability. We have to put our lives in one another's hands, because that's the way God created us -- to be vulnerable.

I don't want to be terribly judgmental about people rediscovering their patriotism, because I think it's a sign of how deeply lonely the American people are that suddenly they feel together. And that's very frightening, because a rootless consumer society suddenly deciding it has something to kill for is a very frightening reality.