Actually, dampening the fire of popular resistance may be exactly what Ken admires Ghandi for, since Ken wrote:
>This is something that has been bothering me for quite some
>time now. "Outing" someone as a racist in public
>discourse, time and time again, has often lead to the
>literal destruction of their lives (public and private).
>I'm certainly not in favour of letting people off the hook
>for saying offensive things... but we need to be careful
>with what we say and how we approach this. There is a
>certain lack of compassion that I've experienced in recent
>protests. When people start chanting "kill the rich!" or
>start looking lingeringly on rocks to throw... I start
>getting nervous. When Serbia was being bombed, the first
>week of protests here in Toronto began with fire bombs
>hitting the US embassy - causing injury to people on both
>sides of the fence, police officers and protestors.
>Lifewise when some student protestors, in another instance,
>started "moshing" against police riot shields.
People who are outraged and fired up are not very good Kantians.... Another argument for postmodern ethics: its fear of the masses and their actions.
Yoshie