John F. Kennedy
Jacques Barzun has defined “revolution” as the “violent transfer of power and property in the name of an idea.”
In recent news from Iraq, we see an initially successful “violent transfer of power and property for the sake of an idea,” that is, a revolution fitting Barzun’s definition, in which the idea behind the violence appears to be the establishment of a political-religious state known as an Islamic Caliphate.
In addition to many familiar violent revolutions in the World—America in 1776, Russia in 1917 and Cuba in 1953—there have also been a large number of non-violent revolutions in recent history, including a number of which that took on names of flowers or colors, e.g., the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989, the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003, and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004.
The World it seems, with still too many exceptions, has been trending toward a kinder and gentler way of resolving its grievances, both in terms of revolutions as well as with disputes between individuals.
The first duel in North America is said to have occurred at Plymouth Rock in 1621. America’s first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, was killed in a duel by his political rival, Aaron Burr, in 1804. Though “illegal,” dueling in America continued after Hamilton’s death for another hundred years.
The carnage of the Civil War is thought to have been a key factor in turning attitudes against dueling. Gradually, the resolution of disputes through the evolving American legal system began to be favored.
All Revolutions are
Confrontational and Hence Dangerous
Violent revolutions are more dangerous than non-violent ones, but even non-violent revolutions can have negative consequences for those who initiate them—because all revolutions are confrontational. They are always confrontational because they involve the transfer of power and property—two things the current holders are usually not inclined to give up without a fight and/or appropriate compensation.
“What factors throughout history have stirred humans, despite great risks, to engage in revolution?
Many great minds in human history have pondered this question and their insights suggest a pattern:
“Revolutions arise from inequalities, numerical or qualitative—from a numerical mass claiming an equality denied to them, or from a minority claiming a superiority denied to them.”
Aristotle
“The seed of revolution is repression.”
Woodrow Wilson
“When dictatorship is a fact,
revolution becomes a right.”
Victor Hugo
While the quotations cited
above all appear to refer to violent revolutions, the basic idea still applies
to non-violent revolutions, such as for example a confrontation in the form of legal
action to force—via the intervention of a legislature or court—the transfer of
power and property in a totally non-violent way. With that understanding, the pattern described
by the above quotations may be summarized as follows:
“When a group of citizens comes to believe it is being subjected to an ongoing injustice by a controlling and indifferent authority, it has a right to confront that authority, legally and politically, in an effort to secure the transfer of power and property required to fairly rectify the injustice in question.”
The Revolt of the State Colleges
This takes us back to Michael McDonald’s Bloomberg News¹ article: “State Colleges Revolt as Years of Cuts Divide U.S. Campuses,” and also takes us back to West Chester University and the recent initiative by supporters to remove it from the PASSHE system of 14 “state-owned” universities and permit it and other qualifying PASSHE universities to become “State-Related” universities. If successful, these efforts would amount to a de facto transfer of power and property in the name of perhaps the following idea:
“Escaping the Injustice of Three
Decades of Privatization Without Representation”
There is no doubt that West
Chester University, the other 13 PASSHE universities, and the students who rely
upon them, have been subjected to ongoing injustice for many years by a
controlling and indifferent authority—the PASSHE Board of Governors—the agent that
should be, but it not now, representing the interests of all of PASSHE’s
Financial Stakeholders, i.e., its Majority as well as its Minority
Stakeholders.²
Although West Chester’s legal and political confrontation is non-violent, it nevertheless exposes the initiators of the confrontation to “negative consequences” or what some might even call “retaliation,” from the agents of the controlling and indifferent authority that, as the source of the repression, has become the target of the legal and political confrontation intended to throw off that repression.
It must be expected then that agents of the controlling and indifferent authority, who clearly benefit from the status quo prompting the “revolt,” will go on to attack the perceived “leaders” of the revolt.
Recent newspaper accounts of West Chester University’s attempt to become “state-related” have garnered a lot of attention, with both supporters and opponents of the idea politely having their say.
But that civil tone changed the other day with a Post-Gazette article³ that seems to conjure if not actually portend retaliation against vulnerable members of the West Chester University community who are suspected of supporting the “revolutionary” idea of West Chester leaving the PASSHE system.
This change in tone suggests another familiar movie theme: “The Empire Strikes Back.”
³ http://www.post-gazette.com/local/2014/06/22/West-Chester-University/stories/201406220080.
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