What do those who hold to "non-violence" think of the first American Revolution?

[Bill St. Clair]

We have every reason to expect that steady perseverance in a course like this will ultimately succeed, wherever the cause is just.  Because "moral might is always on the side of right;" and because governments are composed of men, and not of brutes.

And that's where Mr. Whipple and I disagree. I believe that those at the helm of the world's governments today, be they the puppet leaders on display or those in the shadows who pull the strings and decide which puppets will be candidates for election, are indeed "brutes", not men. They are entirely devoid of conscience, have no regard for life, or pain, or suffering, and cannot be persuaded by any means but brute force. I hope I'm wrong. Massive civil disobedience can still stop them, since their power comes almost entirely from we the oppressed, but it has to be massive. Complete refusal to obey by a large majority of the population.

I'm also not at all fond of arithmetic of lives. If it's my son or daughter who dies, it really doesn't matter to me how many millions of others live.

[dalebert]

Massive civil disobedience can still stop them, since their power comes almost entirely from we the oppressed, but it has to be massive. Complete refusal to obey by a large majority of the population.

Perhaps, but that doesn't magically happen over night. The small acts of civil disobedience may very well lead to larger acts of civil disobedience if we do it right.

[Moorlock]

I'm not a pacifist nor a Christian, and so probably can't offer an adequate defense of Whipple's argument, but I think he's got a real point that the advantages of armed, violent resistance are often exaggerated and based on short-sighted fury and revenge-seeking, when non-violent resistance - when practiced with as much courageousness and willingness to bear risk and hardship - would gain more and cost less.  Gandhi was persuasive enough with this message that the Indian National Congress named him Commander and Chief of their resistance forces, but Whipple's pamphlet is the earliest example I know of that puts the argument forward with much detail (I haven't done anything like an exhaustive search, so there may very well be predecessors).  Now there are whole think tanks devoted to the subject of nonviolent civilian resistance, and it's studied even deep in the belly of the Pentagon.