the rabbinical view of LesserEvilism

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 01:07 PM 11/2/00 -0500, Doug quotes Rabbi Lerner:
>
>Finally, voting for a lesser evil entails abandoning and helping to 
>disspirit those who share your principles. Many Nader people are 
>standing up for the principles that you believe in, and instead of 
>supporting them for doing so you are attacking them. Don't be 
>surprised if many these people eventually give up on trying to change 
>the world. So the next time you look around for allies for some 
>visionary idea or moral cause that inspires you, you will find fewer 
>people ready to take risks, and ironically you may then use that to 
>convince yourself that nothing was ever possible and that's why you 
>"had" to vote for the lesser of two evils.

That reminds me of the scene from the "One Flew Over the Coockoo's Nest"
when Nicholson tries to lift the drinking fountain to ram the bathroom
window.  He fails miserably, and his companions laugh at him, but at the
end of the film someone else follows his footsteps and succeeds.

Touching and powerful, indeed.  Except that it will not work here.  A
better analogy would be the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - while some tried to
appease the Nazis, others decided to fight - but in the end none of these
choices mattered, because everyone ended "up in smoke." 

Fighting the Nazi juggernaut required much more than personal attitudes
(appeasement or defiance) - it required the Red Army.  Ditto for the
juggernaut of American ruling-class bipartisanship - we need a Red Army or
at least a Sputnik to shatter the self-confidence of the ruling class and
force it to make some concessions.

wojtek