Utopia–seeking delegates attending the morning presentations of the World Peace Forum at Vancouver's prestigious Orpheum Theater will hopefully have been tainted by second thoughts for their dogmatic belief system, courtesy of three simple souls daring to think differently from them, and to say so in the street, in public, with signs.
Dag, frequent commenter Truepeers, and your humble correspondent planted ourselves outside the World Peace Forum's venue this morning, carrying signs with various slogans, and had quite a memorable time engaging curious (and not so curious) delegates in dialogue that ranged from pleasant to antagonistic. The most offensive person we met was probably the guy who hit my sign. Then in descending order of negativity: slurs and insults, sneering condescension, sympathy for our pre-supposed mental retardation… the real dialogue ended up being with people who were genuinely curious about how we could be apostates to their utopian religion, and politely asked legitimate questions to which they patiently listened to our point of view. If any of you are reading this, thank you for your civil debate; we may agree to disagree, but I certainly respect the courtesy you granted my perspective, and I hope I matched it as I listened to yours.
The looks of amazement we got from so many of the delegates suggest how rarely they must actually encounter alternative points of view challenging their agenda. Growing up in Canada, we've had more than enough occasions to get used to hearing their view passed off as *the* view, but seemingly they've never heard ours, so we must come across as mysterious aliens from another planet. I can sympathize with their puzzlement, for I find myself as completely baffled by the world view that they painted for me, as they likely were by my recounting of current events as I see them.
Trying to encapsulate three hours of experiences like this morning's, into a tight little blog post is daunting. I'm going to tackle it in two posts, this one in more stream of consciousness fashion, then hopefully find the time to write a second one seeing the day from a more detached perspective.
First, meeting the various delegates. The three of us engaged in a series of dialogues with Israel-hating Jews, business-hating wealthy suburbanites, anti-American Americans, and a certain lady whom I shall always remember for sincerely describing to us how the New York Times is a terribly Right-Wing media outlet. She also went on to confess to having killed "one million Vietnamese", and I-can't-remember-how-many Iraqis. "America killed them, in my name, so I killed them", was her heartfelt explanation.
When Dag offered her our blog address in order to read a differing point of view to hers, she stopped him in mid-sentence to honestly admit she wasn't interested in reading anything we might have to say. (Yet we are the ones who are "close-minded", you see.)
This was the first time I had ever done any protesting or picketing of any kind. Even during my (short-lived, thank goodness) rite of passage as an anti-American Canadian, I never did anything like I did this morning. No wonder the left do these things so frequently, it is definitely an exhilarating experience. In retrospect, I realize I wasn't prepared to engage in such basic debate and dialogue as was required. I'm not in practice anymore at explaining why Bush isn't evil, for instance; that caught me a bit off-guard, and so I regret I may have fluffed my response once or twice.
What made the morning so fascinating, however, was the number of average people just passing by on the street on their way about town, who read my "God Bless America" sign, stopped to thank me, and explained why they agreed with me. Their simple eloquence, mixed with gratitude for my sign's sincere statement, really made my day; and unlike the activist delegates quick to brandish their "peace studies" university degrees as their rationale for their point of view, the pro-US Canadians passing by on the street managed to briefly phrase the common sense of the common man in a way that has truly inspired me. What a thrill it can be to meet like-minded people sometimes. Just one of the approving smiles I got from these fellow citizens more than made up for having to wake up at 5:00 AM on a Saturday morning to talk to so many grumpy people wearing name tags.
Looking back, it was interesting how those talking to us expected us to be in absolute lock-step in our philosophy, chanting mono-syllabic verses just like in the usual left-wing protests nowadays, whereas in reality we were all there for somewhat different reasons. We are three distinct individuals, with sometimes radically different beliefs on certain issues, yet we can readily come together around a common idea and find a way to negotiate through each other's differing points of view, to act in united partnership towards shared objectives. (hm, kind of reminds me of a country I know...) We seemed to be encountering people who were more used to protestors incapable of holding a range of motivations and belief systems, and it probably led to quite a bit of unintentional confusion. (I noticed a particularly confused expression on one delegate's face as he read my "God Bless America" sign while listening to Dag's atheistic justification for intervention in the Middle East.)
It was genuine fun seeing how surprised the peace activists were by Truepeer's articulateness, I don' t think they were expecting that degree of intellectual firepower from "conservatives". Many would start off talking to us as if we were children; one sentence from Truepeers would usually put an end to that kind of tone.
Final thought for now... from the dozens of chats we had today, a comment echoing in my memory comes from the first half of our morning, as a loudly sarcastic peace activist established her math skills by revealing that there were only three of us, compared to "four thousand" of them, as if that in itself should disqualify our existence. So symbolic of the left: undisguised contempt for the value of the individual, despite all the rhetoric of valuing "diversity".
Madam, sometimes it only takes three people to make a difference.
Sometimes it just takes one person.
You should try it sometime.
Posted by Charles Henry
http://nodhimmitude.blogspot
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Cool!
ReplyDeleteSounds like you had a good time! Sometimes I fantasize about doing something like that, but the protests over here are mostly Muslim, and you don't fuck with Muslims or you are dead, literally!
Good for you, I think more conservatives should do things like this, but we are too conservative or busy to do so!
Anyway congrats!
Im dont know you, but I'm proud of you!
www.westerndefence.blogspot.com
It was out of character for us to stand on the street with picket signs protesting against hippies, but maybe that's part of what made it so much fun.
ReplyDeleteWe can and we should stand up to these wankers at every chance we get to show them they do not get away with their murderous antics without the people objecting in person. The Leftists think they're the only ones who count, that they are the only ones with opinions, that they have the answers and monopolitic answers to all questions of morality. Many of them were stupid in the head. They were so painfully stupid I could have choked. There is nothing to fear from confronting these people. They are the ones who survived too much LSD in the 60s, and they aren't worth anything other than contempt and a public display of scorn. Don't let these people intimidate you. They are first-class losers. Tell them so, in paraphrase.
The good part of the experience was meeting sympathetic passers-by. We are not alone, folks. Give people a chance to tell you and they will.
I didn't make it to the "Peace Forum" even though I live just a few blocks from there.
ReplyDeleteEverything I need to know about peace, I learned from truepeers on Covenant Zone. Basically that a little violence can prevent alot of death in the long run. And pacifists often end up just having to surrender. Appeasment doesn't work, a lesson of history.
Your comment about truepeers' intellectual firepower was accurate. That could be a slogan: "Intellectual Firepower for Peace."
Our protest against the Left assumption was excellent in many ways, one of them being the heightened comaradery that flows from people meeting in person as friends to challenge a common foe, standing side by side knowing the possiblity of danger lurks, and knowing we face it together anyway. I'm totally proud of the guys who made our rally possible. I think of this kind of activity as typically American, a pioneer stance, but there's that in all of us, all men and women who dare. It is transcendant.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't manage to suffer the slings and arrows of dhimmi abuse because they were too easy to deflect. I confronted a guy in a suit smoking a cigarette, a guy who turned out to be the mayor of Burnaby, a very large suburb of Vancouver. I grappled with him, got him down, and beat him badly in verbal combat. Oh, I feel like Teddy Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill.
We met people of all kinds, labour people who claimed not to have any idea that they were consorting with Muslim terorists; suburbanites from Minnesota who had no idea they were hanging out with people who advocate murder of children as politic. And moon-bats flapping like leaves in a storm.
My high and my low involved young journalists: the first an aggressive and blinkered young man who could not believe we would protest against a "peace conference." He barked his questions at the guys, demanded agreement with his idiocies, bullied and raged; but it's not in me to put up with such, and I, less than charming fellow that I am sometimes, attacked with superiour unintellectual fire-power of my own. A man who looked like a fashion model football player shrank and slunk away. He'd never before encountered anything or anyone like us, and when he returned hours later he did not approach us but hung back in a corner, defeated in the mind, worried and humiliated and withdrawn. I feel badly about what I did to him. I wrecked his bubble of ideology. Now he has to stand in public knowing he couldn't defend his idocies. He is in a significant sense shattered. It's obvious that no one has ever beaten him like that. I didn't do so to humiliate him. I hope that now that he's down and groggy he'll look at himself and his associates and feel shame when he hears their ugly arguments. He might well recall how painful it is to be beaten by a superiour sense of reality, and then he might reject his ideological skin and become the man he should be. Or he might just hit me.
The high point of the day was another young journalist who approached us and asked questions and took notes and asked more questions. He's a smart fellow. His questions developed sensibly as he continued to ask more. He got the ideas we presented even if he might not agree with them. He was a pleasure to speak with. I learned some from him.
One lesson that should have been obvious to me in advance is to carry business cards of our blog addresses. My handwriting is bad to start with, and my pen ran dry off and on. Now it's clear that I will pass out cards as occasion calls for it.
The best thing that happened at our rally is that it happened at all. Now we all know that we can all do this.
We are ascendent.
Charles,
ReplyDeleteWhat made the morning so fascinating, however, was the number of average people just passing by on the street on their way about town, who read my "God Bless America" sign, stopped to thank me, and explained why they agreed with me.
There are more of "us" than the left is willing to admit.
Charles Henry, Dag, and TruePeers,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for doing this, and for your contribution here at IBA.
Free man, thank you, it was hard to make time to participate; a couple of us headed straight to work immediately following the morning's protest, in order to meet our work obligations.
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons we had to get up so early to get there, was to find time to make our signs!
AOW, I bet if the situation was reversed somehow, and we had been three anti-war protestors standing up to some conservative gathering, all those media people who sneered at us would have instead plastered us all over the tv news that night. I think the reason conservatives believe themselves outnumbered is that actions like ours get left out of news coverage, we were just too nice to fit their stereotype of neanderthal war-mongers.
Pastorius, it's the least we could do to make sure the US gets some of the credit it deserves.
This was the first time I ever waved any flag or carried any sign on a street corner, in public, so I will always be proud it was the US flag and a God Bless America sign.
Hey, by the way, I'd love for Charles Henry and TruePeers to be contributors here, but I don't want to interfere with anything YARBG or No Covenant are doing.
ReplyDeleteSo, you guys decide among yourselves.
If Truepeers doesn't come around to answer in person I'll pass on your obscure message for you, Orange Cross, though I have to admit that whether Peers has read Moore's work is not particularly interesting to most of us. I might as easily ask if you've read Butler's version, Erehwon, and to the same effect.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing wrong with the "peace conference" per se, from our collective view point, but the problem is that it happened at all. Insofaras it took place it was a raging success, providing those attending with free meals and lodging, conversation and feelings of moral superiority at the expense of the vast many who paid the the dhimmis ways. It not only distracts the public from pressing problems of terrorism and slavery and other forms of hatred against the people in general, it prevents the gradual spread of Human decency by vilifying it and by calling it imperialism, Zionism, or racism. This conference and others like it promote victimization theory with a pseudo-legitimate veneer of intellectual and moral authority it certainly does not deserve. The fools we spoke with were convinced in their own minds that they are righteous and decent, while at the same time they consort with and cheer on killers and savages who commit murder at random and call it peace.
But to reach Truepeers for his analysis, for which you will have to engage a professional intellectual at a high level, you may wish to go to http://covenantzone.blogspot.com/ for first-hand discussion.